sociolinguistic variation in the speech community of béchar · from social context of language...
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People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
University of Oran Es-Sénia
Faculty of Arts, Human and Social Sciences
Department of Foreign Languages
Section of English
Sociolinguistic variation in the speech
community of Béchar
Thesis submitted to the department of foreign languages in candidacy for the degree of
Magister in Sociolinguistics
Submitted by: Supervised by:
Dr BENHATTAB L. President University of Oran
Dr BELKHENCHIR K. Examiner University of Oran
Dr SEBBANE Z. Examiner University of Oran
Dr BOUHANIA B. Examiner University of Adrar
Academic Year: 2012- 2013
Fatima Zahra FEZZIOUI Dr Bachir BOUHANIA
Members of the jury Soutenue le 04 Juillet 2013
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CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgment
Contents
List of Abbreviations ………………………………………..….. ……………….3
List of Tables…………………………………………………………….….……. 5
List of Maps....................................................................................................... 6
List f Phonetic Symbols…………………………………………………………...7
Abstract………………………………………………………………………….....9
I-General
introduction……………………………………………………….…………..… 10
II-Chapter One: Literature Review.
1.1
Introduction………………………………………………………………………..13
1.2 Languages Varieties and Social Structure:
1.2.1 Language, Dialect, and Variety………………………………………...15
1.2.2 Social structure…………………………………………………………18
1.3 Dialectology:
1.3.1 Mutual intelligibility.......................................................................…...19
1.3.2 Social dialects……………………………………………………….....21
1.3.3 Modern dialectology…………………………………………………...22
1.4 The Speech community………………………………………………………23
1.5 The Linguistic variable……………………………………………………….27
1.6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….…...30
III-Chapter Two: The Aspects of Sociolinguistic Situation in Algeria.
2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..33
2.2 Arabic: CA/MSA and Algerian………………………………………………35
2.3 Berber…………………………………………………………………………39
2.4 French…………………………………………………………………………41
2
2.5 Algeria, a Multilingual Speech Community………………………….……...43
2.5.1 Multilingualism in Algeria…………………………………………….44
2.5.2 Bilingualism in Algeria…………………………………………....46
2.5.3 Code switching…………………………………………………….48
2.6 Diglossia…………………………………………………………………..50
2.7 Rural vs. urban dialects …………………………………………………….56
2.8 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….58
IV-Chapter Three: Sociolinguistic situation in Béchar
3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………60
3.1.1General background of Béchar…………………………………….….60
3.1.2 Origins of the tribes…………………………………………………..61
3.2 The Dialects Existing in Béchar:
3.2.1 The dialect of the majority (D1)……………………………………..63
3.2.2 Dialect of the DouiMni3 (D2)………………………………………..64
3.2.3 Dialect of the Ksouria (D3)…………………………………………..68
3.2.4 Dialect of the Ouled Jrir (D4)………………………………………..71
3.2.5 Shelha (D5)…………………………………………………………...71
3.3 Lexical comparison and cognition with MSA and D1………………………..75
3.3.1 Cognition with MSA…………………………………………………76
3.3.2 Comparison and Cognition with D1………………………………...79
3.4 D1 as an elaborated code:
3.4.1 The Questionnaire…………………………………………………....82
3.4.2 Results of the questionnaire…………………………………………83
3.5 conclusion…………………………………………………………..…………..85
V-Chapter four : Sociolinguistic variation in Béchar
4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………....87
4.2 Phonological variables…………………………………………………………88
4.2.1 Diphthongization /ai/in D2 vs. /i: / in D3……………………………….88
4.2.2 Variables /e:/ and /e/……………………………………………………..89
4.2.3 Variable /ţ/…………………………………………………………….…90
4.3 Morphological variables……………………………………………………....91
4.3.1 Variable «u:» vs. « ah ………………………………………………..91
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4.3.2 Variable «hu:» vs. « hu:m »……………………………………………92
4.4 Lexical variation………………………………………………………….….…93
4.5 Age grading……………………....…………………………………….…….96
4.5.1 Phonological variable (e :) in D3………………………………………..97
4.5.2 The morphological variable /u:/………………………………………98
4.5.3 Lexical variables………………………………………………………….98
4.6 Gender……………………………………………………………….….........100
4.7 Language shift……………………....………………………………………..103
4.8 Language maintenance………………………………………………………104
4.9 Diglossia in Béchar……………………………………………………………105
4.10 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...106
V I -General Conclusion…………………………………………………………107
xddneppA: Lexical Similarities and Differences between Standard Arabic, Dialect
1, Dialect 2, Dialect 3, Dialect 4 and Dialect 5…………………………………..109
Questionnaires…………………………………………………………………..113
Bibliography………………………………………………………………….…..116
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ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS
AA: Algerian Arabic
Cl.Ar: Classical Arabic.
D1: Dialect One, Dialect of the Majority.
D2: Dialect Two, Dialect of the Doui Mni3.
D3: Dialect Three, Dialect of the Ksouria.
D4: Dialect Four, Dialect of the Ouled Jrir.
D5 : Dialect Five, Dialect of the Shlouh
F: Feminine.
H: High. Variety
L: Low Variety
M: Masculine.
MSA: Modern Standard Arabic.
Pl: Plural.
S: Singular.
[]: In the Boundary of.
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List of Tables
Table (4.1): Group scores of variable /e:/ in % - co-variation with age…..…....97
Table (4.2): Group scores of variable /u:/ in % co-variation with age…..….....98
Table (4.3):Group scores of lexical variable [wilak] in % co-variation with sex in
D2…………100
Table (4.4): Group scores of lexical variable [wilak] in % co-variation with sex in
D3………..101
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The Map
Map (1): administral division of Béchar………………………………………61
7
List of phonetic symbols
Consonants:
Plosives Fricatives
[b] as in [bæb] “door” [f] as in [fa:r] “mouse”
[t] as in [ntæ3i] “mine” [s] as in [ssma] “sky”
[d] as in [dar] “house” [z] as in [zu:j] “two”
[k] as in [kelb] “dog” [∫] as in [∫u:f] “look”
[g] as in [gamra] “moon” [x] as in [xæl] “uncle”
[ħ] as in [ħəl] “open”
[3] as in [3ammi] “my uncle”
[h] as in [həmm] “anxiety”
Affricate [γ] as in [γţa] “covert”
[ʒ] as in [ʒa:r] “neighbour” Lateral
Nasals [l] as in [li:l] “night”
[m] as in [mard] “illness”
[n] as in [na:r] “fire” approximants
Flaps [w] as in [wəld] “boy”
[j] as in [jəd] “hand”
[r] as in [raʒəl] “man”
Emphatics:
[q] as in [qərd] “monkey”
[ð] as in [ðæb] “dissolved”
[θ] as in [θəlj] “snow”
[ţ] as in [ta:r] “it flew”
[ð] as in [ðalma] “darkness”
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Vowels
[æ] as in [ðæb] “dissolved”
[a] as in [rajəl] “man”
[i] as in [jdid] “new”
[ə] as in [wəld] “son”
[o] as in [ftor] “lunch”
[a:] as in [na:r] “fire”
[i:] as in [li:l] “night”
[u:] as in [jabu:] “they brought” (similar to the French /ou/ )
Used in D3 [e] as in /e/ of French [e:] long /e:/
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Abstract
The present research work is an attempt at analysing linguistic variation in the
speech community of Béchar, a town where the sociolinguistic situation became
interesting in the last few decades. Indeed, a significant homogeneity can readily be
observed in the speech community nowadays; the young speakers use a new
elaborated code, on the other hand the older generations use different dialects which
vary according to ethnicity; Varieties of this kind do not usually receive sufficient
interest in the field of investigation, though they carry many interesting linguistic
phenomena.
Before presenting the field of work, we will first introduce some important linguistic
key concepts such as: language varieties and speech community, the second chapter
draws a picture of the sociolinguistic situation in Béchar, and its linguistic
repertoire, we refer to the linguistic phenomena which exist including bilingualism,
multilingualism, diglossia, and code switching, this chapter includes a categorization
of the Algerian dialects as Rural or Urban ones. The third chapter is reserved for the
description of the most salient characteristics of the existing dialects in Béchar; most
of the data obtained from questionnaires and interviews, reveal that a growing
number of young speakers shift to D1 or what we call “the dialect of the majority”,
while young speakers from the Doui Mni3 tend to stick to their original dialect (D2).
Chapter four introduces ethnicity as the main factor that correlates with linguistic
variation; some phonological morphological and lexical variables are presented, in
this chapter, also, we introduce age and gender as linguistic variables, in D3 there
are linguistic features that appear specific to women’s speech, while in D2 the
difference is not very apparent. We have found no evidence of linguistic variation
correlating with social stratification or style; to a certain extent, the sociolinguistic
variation we have been able to examine is due, mainly, to ethnicity, or to age and
gender, an important conclusion is that, because of the growing number of speakers
who shift to D1 we may be witnessing important linguistic changes in the speech
community of Béchar.
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I. General Introduction
Sociolinguistic research has provided a significant development in recent years;
it has attended more definite descriptions and a more realistic analysis of language
in its social context. It studies language within society and the aspects that result
from social context of language such as: bilingualism, multilingualism, diglossia,
borrowing, codeswitching, and other phenomena; it analyses the influence of
various social factors on the speaker’s linguistic behaviour and the importance of
synchronic variation in actual speech interaction. As Pride remarks:
“it is difficult to escape the conclusion that language is very frequently the whole
social behaviour of the moment.”
(Pride, 1970: 289)
Labov, followed by many other linguists, gave a new start to the study of language
in relation to the circumstance where it functions, by means of investigation
techniques based on experiential research work, it has been shown that linguistic
variation is systematically related to certain social variables such as social class, sex,
age, etc., and also responsible for linguistic change. Since language is a social
phenomenon it is natural to assume that the structure of a society has some impact
on the language of the speakers of that society.
The Algerian speech community includes a large number of dialects which are
distributed over many regional areas, and a lot is being done by a great number of
sociolinguists to present and analyze many varieties, either in Rural or Urban
context. Therefore, this paper examines the most salient features of Béchar speech
community’s dialects, providing the sociolinguistic field with a study of
sociolinguistic variation in a southern region of Algeria.
This research work is divided into four chapters. The first one is a literary
review where we present the most important linguistic key concepts in addition to a
general description of the linguistic variables. In the second chapter we try to draw a
linguistic picture of the Algerian speech community which displays a certain degree
of multilingualism (Arabic, Berber, French) though colloquial Arabic –the low
variety in Ferguson’s terms (1959) - remains the major language; this chapter also
includes a study of the main sociolinguistic phenomena that take place in Algeria
like diglossia and code switching.
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The third and fourth carry the fieldwork, in the third chapter we introduce today’s
linguistic situation in Béchar, we give general observations on the existing dialects,
and some specific characteristics of each dialect. This chapter includes comparisons
between the dialects and MSA. Chapter four deals with variation between two main
dialects, and the results (obtained from rapid face-to-face interviews) show that a
certain number of linguistic items may be observed to vary either with combination
to the tribe (art.) speakers belong to, or in relation to the age and gender variables.
The problem area of this research work can be structured in the form of the
following questions:
What are the exiting dialecs in Béchar?
What are the specific features of each dialect?
In what way do the existing dialects correlate with social factors?
We will try to give adequate answers to these questions. Using the Labovian
methodology we will try to find rules for phonological, morphological, and lexical
variations and their correlation with social factors; these correlations are presented
and analyzed in a quantitatively statistical results and tables.
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Chapter one:
Literature review
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1.1 Introduction
Synchronic language variation and diachronic language change are two ways of
language development over time and within certain areas or groups of language
users. Synchronic language variations are differences in pronunciation, use, or
vocabulary within the same language between groups of people, regions of the
country or contextual situations at the same period of time. On the other hand,
Diachronic language changes are real transformations that occur in a language over
a long period of time and for several reasons, including ease of production and ease
of comprehension, and are wholly accepted by users of the language.
Diachronic language change occurs over long periods of time and tends to be
accepted in the language as a whole, not just accepted by certain groups of language
users, ASL (American Sign Language) demonstrate well the concept of diachronic
change over its more than 225 years history, signs researched back to the Abbe de
l’Eppe from his 1776 publications show dramatic changes that seem to support ease
of production and ease of reception.
For example signs produced near the centre of the face tend to have moved toward
the perimeter of the face (ex. WRONG) and signs that required two hands near the
face require now only one (HORSE), in contrast, signs that are produced in the
lower mid-section area of the body that previously require one hand, now require
two (TRAVEL).
As time goes on, people need new words to describe new technologies or
inventions, these words will be added to languages where they will develop
variations depending on which groups of people use them. It is easy to realize the
differences between synchronic language variation and diachronic language change,
by looking at several examples each.
Synchronic language variation can be demonstrated well with American English,
one example of language variation occurs between different ages of the speaker
where someone in his sixties would probably say, “I will see you tomorrow, Sam”,
another one in his late teens might say, "later, dog"; in each of these examples the
speaker means the same thing semantically but lexically, different words are chosen
to meet the approximate ages of the speaker. Another example of synchronic
language variation occurs when listening to conversations in different geographic
areas of a country for example in America in Oklahoma it is fine to say “ain’t” in a
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conversation even in a workplace; but in New York, you might be considered as an
uneducated person if you say it.
One last example of synchronic language variation takes place when the speaker
uses different registers of language; when speaking in different social settings, a
person will not use the same terms of vocabulary with his friend chatting in the café,
and when introducing himself to the president.
For example, a person who treats sick people can be called a doctor, physician,
medical practitioner, or even a quack, depending on with whom the speaker is
conversing.
English doesn’t have differing vocabulary to distinguish “respectful word forms”
from “non –respectful word forms”, different vocabulary will be selected according
to the particular social situation to show respect, for instance you would call a judge
“your honour” or “Sir” and not “dude” or “dog”, unlike in French, where “vous” is
for “you” with respect and “tu” for “you”(informal), or “ni:nga” (you with respect
and) and “ni:” (you without respect) in Tamil,
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1.2 Languages Varieties and Social Structure:
1.2.1 Language, Dialect, and Variety:
The phrase variety of language is used to refer to different manifestations of language.
What make one variety of language distinct from another are the linguistic items that
are involved in the language. The three important elements that represent the varieties
of language are: language, dialect, and variety; these terms are close to each other
especially language and dialect which are regarded as non technical terms.
Language was defined differently according to its users, for instance, poets say that
language acts as an artistic medium, while philosophers define it as a means of
interpreting human life and experience, and sociologists see it as a way of
communication and language teachers regard it as a system that comprises a set of
skills. The complexity of language is correlated to human life such as: society, culture,
mind, and thoughts and the study of each of these associated with language leads to the
birth of a discipline, for example, language with society leads to Sociolinguistics.
Sapir (1921:7), on his side, describes “language” as: “a purely human and non
instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of
voluntarily produced symbols”. For Sapir language is a human property of expressing
ideas and feelings, it is in fact a system of symbols of which only the spoken form is
mainly important, it also serves as the most important part of people’s culture and a
means of preserving that culture and transmitting it through generations.
There have been many theories which propose the origin of language, the exact
origin of language is never found but some theories helped as lines of development,
some regards the origins of language as a matter of God when he gave Adam the
capacity to speak a fully Pledged language, other theories remain unable to explain the
origin of language but at least they agree that in primitive times language has
developed from a basic need to communicate.
Storck and Widdowson (1974:15) say in this respect that man: “is a social animal
using language to communicate in such a way that it is indispensable to the
maintenance of his culture”
Finding an exact definition for “dialect”, was the main trouble of sociolinguists, it is
regarded as a sub-division of language which varies from other varieties
grammatically, lexically, and phonologically, it is generally associated with privilege,
low status, and has no official prestige like Black English Vernacular. We might refer
to a linguistic variety which is not standard and has no written form as dialect, in
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contrast language is the standard written form and used in official setting. In the case
of the Algerian speech community MSA is the standard form of Arabic, most
prestigious, correct and the appropriate variety of school, media, religion and other
public domains, leaving the other local and regional varieties for every day
communication.
The variety spoken in a given geographical area is called a regional dialect, however
geographical boundaries are not always trusted in defining limits of variation; people
move from one region to another taking their original dialects with them, and this in
turn means that there is a “geographical mobility”. In fact geography is not the only
relevant factor in determining dialect boundaries, Britain, for instance, takes social
class over geography as a determinant of speech variation.
Size and prestige, for many sociolinguists a key of differentiation between language
and dialect, that is language is both larger and more prestigious than dialect. Hudson
(1996:32) says in this respect: “…a language is larger than a dialect. That is, a variety
called a language contains more items than one called a dialect […] the other contrast
between language and dialect is a question of prestige, a language having prestige
which a dialect lacks.”
In this sense Standard Arabic, for example, contains a large number of terms than its
various local dialects. People usually may not find a problem in recognizing what
language they speak, sometimes they even have the ability to decide whether it is a
dialect or a language they speak, yet they may face a difficulty in explaining what is
the different between language and dialect. Haugen (1966) points out that both
language and dialect are ambiguous terms, but ordinary people use them quite freely in
speech arguing that dialect for them is almost not more than a local non prestigious
variety of a language, in contrast scholars frequently experience a substantial
confusion in deciding which term should be used rather than the other in particular
situations. He adds that while speakers of English ignored the concept of “patio” in the
description of language, they have tried to employ both of “language” and “dialect” in
a number of conflicting scenes, dialect is used for both local varieties of English and
for different types of informal, lower class, and rural speech. Haugen (1966:924-925)
concludes that: “In general usage it therefore remains quite undefined whether such
dialects are part of the language or not. In fact, the dialect is often thought of as
starting outside the language…as a social norm, then, a dialect is excluded from polite
societies.”
17
However, from the linguistic point of view, a standard language has not been proved to
be better than any other variety, for instance, in spite of the high prestige that Standard
English has, linguistically speaking it is only one variety among many; it is the
standardization process which made the chosen variety to be used in administrations,
media, and education as it became a superposed variety and a prestigious accent.
Trudgill (1983:9) says:
“The scientific study of language has convinced scholars that all languages and
correspondingly all dialects are equally good as linguistic systems. All varieties of a
language are structured, complex, and rule governed systems which are wholly
adequate for the needs of their speakers. It follows that value judgments concerning the
correctness and purity of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic.”
Even sociolinguists face problems in deciding whether some kinds of speech are
dialects or languages. As an example Serbian and Croatian are ethnically two distinct
languages, but there is mutual intelligibility between their speakers, the same thing
occurs between Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish which are all autonomous standard
languages in three political independent states; nevertheless educated speakers in those
countries can communicate with each other. In contrast Mandarin and Cantonese are
Chinese dialects, but there is no mutual intelligibility between the speakers of these
dialects, sociolinguists prefer to use the term variety in such intermediate case.
Variety is a neutral term used to refer to any kind of language, dialect, sociolect, style,
or register. It may be general like American English, or specific like the dialect of the
lower working class of New York City. Hudson (1996:22) says that: “a variety of
language is a set of linguistic items with similar social distributions.”
If variety is defined according to the range of speakers or circumstances with which it
is associated, then it may contain only few items and then it can be much smaller than
a language and even than a dialect. However, there are no restrictions on the relations
among varieties because they may overlap or one variety may include another. The
defining characteristic to each variety is the relevant relation to society, that is by
whom, and when the items concerned are used.
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1.2.2 Social structure
Dialectologists, anthropologists and some linguists have tried effectively to explain the
noticeable synchronic language variation in relation to social factors, they give a
theoretical importance to the study of language in its social context, and the
development of this view was behind the progress of a new discipline called
‘Sociolinguistics’. Such a recent field of investigation started to throw light on the
nature of language and on the society, but also to describe how different socially-
defined factors are tightly correlated with linguistic variability Hymes (1971) writes in
this respect:
“Concepts that are unquestionably postulated as basic to linguistics (speaker-
listener speech community, speech act, acceptability, etc.) are, as we see in fact
socio-cultural variables, and only when one has moved from their postulation to
their analysis can one secure the foundations of linguistic theory itself” (Hymes
,1971: 277)
Certainly, in an attempt at proving that in any speech community mono-, bi- or
multilingual, linguistic variability is the rule, Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968)
agree in writing: “One of the corollaries of our approach is that in a language
serving a complex (i.e. real) community, it is absence of structure heterogeneity that
would be dysfunctional.” (Weinreich,
Labov and Herzog, 1968:101)
It is exactly this ‘structured heterogeneity‘ that today’s sociolinguists are trying to
throw light upon, and their findings result from explorations based on social
perception, and thus they go beyond the subject matter of linguistic theory, Pride
(1970) explained : “Language is very frequently the whole social behaviour of the
moment”
(Pride, 1970: 289)
Though ,while in certain speech communities the sociolinguistic behaviour of an
upper class speaker presents a similar one to what is considered as standard
language, in other communities there is a wide gap between everyday speech and
the standard, or written form, in other words and according to the structural theory
of language, while in western speech communities the standard form of language is
used in everyday setting by a number of speakers mainly from the higher social
class, in diglossic situations such as in Arabic-speaking communities there seems to
19
be no ideal speaker-listener (in Chomsky’s sense ), because Cl. Ar has almost no
native speakers, thus as we shall see below in chapter 2, the relation between Cl .Ar
and its low varieties is far from being comparable to such contrast as
spoken/standard English: indeed an English educated middle class speaker will
usually say “they ‘re walking“ whereas a lower class speaker might say “they
walking” the two utterances do not differ to a great extent and are mutually
understood by both types of speakers .
But in Arab- speaking communities there is often a clear-cut difference between a
Cl Ar utterance and the corresponding one in a low variety :the sentence in Cl .Ar /
inahoum ya3maloun/ , “they are working” is said “rahou kaykhadmou “ in Béchar
and “ rahoum yakhadmou” in Oran
1.3 Dialectology
Ferdinand de Saussure delineated his famous distinction between synchrony and
diachrony in his “Cours de linguistique générale”, he explained: “the opposition
between the two viewpoints . . . is absolute and allows no compromise. A few facts
show what the difference is and why it is irreducible” (1916[1959]:83), since it is
socially situated and stimulated, variation is “intrinsic” to usual language and is
constantly potentially unstable.
1.3.1 Mutual intelligibility
Dialects are mainly considered as subdivisions of a particular language, we always
say dialects of a language, and so we may talk of the Parisian dialect of French, the
Yorkshire dialect of English, and the Bavarian dialect of German, and so on. To find
a clear distinction between a language and a dialect is something always faced with
difficulties, and one of the related problems is to find an exact definition of a
language; mutual intelligibility was one way for finding a definition to “language” ,
in fact a language is a collection of a mutually intelligible dialects which means that
a dialect is a subpart of a language, this characterization of language, nevertheless is
not totally correct, some counterexamples like the Scandinavian languages,
Norwegian, Danish and Swedish which are a mutually intelligible but different
languages, explains that mutual intelligibility is not enough to draw limits of
20
distinction, on the other hand some dialects of the same language are not mutually
intelligible like in German.
Dialect is a variety of a language, characterised by systemic differences in
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary from other varieties of the same language;
everyone speaks a dialect, in fact, many dialects and at different levels; people who
speak a certain dialect are called a speech community, for example British English
and American English are some of the larger dialectal divisions in the English
speaking world.
A dialect spoken by an individual is called “Idiolect”; every one has small
differences between the way they talk and the way even the family and best friends
talk, creating a “minimal dialect”.
Dialectology is the study of regional dialects or dialects defined by geographical
regions, this was done originally by travelling around a country and asking the
people living in various locals what words or phrases they use for particular objects
and concepts. In a non specialized encyclopaedia dialectology is defined as the
study of dialects—both descriptive and theoretical—and those engaged in this study
are known as dialectologists. Interpreting the term dialect broadly to mean ‘variety
of language’ (but see below), this means that it is concerned with analysing and
describing related language varieties, particularly in respect of their salient
differences and similarities. It is also concerned with developing theoretical
frameworks for such analysis and description, and for arriving at generalizations and
explanatory hypotheses about the nature of linguistic differentiation and variation.
Like most branches of linguistics, dialectology began to assume its modern form in
the nineteenth century.
The most famous American study was performed by Hans Kurath, and covered the
most of the USA east; what Hans Kurath and all the dialectologists looked for were
isoglosses (iso: same gloss: speech) boundaries separating regions of a country
which uses different words or constructions to describe the same things.
Hans Kurath found in some parts of the country that isoglosses, for several unrelated
words, fell practically the same locations forming bundles of isoglosses. These
bundles were significant discoveries as they indicated the existence of a real
correlation between speech patterns and region, these bundles also provided a living
linguistic reminder of the patterns of migration of American moving westward.
Dialectology started to be effected directly by linguistics; it was also influenced
indirectly by the social sciences. Some dialectologists began to identify that the
21
dimension of linguistic variation had been concentrated on to the elimination of the
social dimension.
If we observe dialects spoken by people in rural areas, in many places in the world,
we might find this kind of situation. If we move from village to village, in a
particular direction, we note linguistic differences which distinguish one village
from another, these differences vary in a way that the further we get from our initial
point, the larger the differences will become (if we arrange villages along our route
in a geographical order) while speakers from village A understand people from
village B very well and those from village F quite well, they may understand village
M speech only with considerable difficulty, and that of village Z not at all. Villagers
from M, on the other hand, will probably understand village F speech quite well,
and villagers from A and Z only with difficulty. In other words, dialects on the
external boundaries of the geographical area may not be mutually intelligible, but
they will be related by a chain of mutual intelligibility.
All speakers have a social background, as well as a regional setting, and in their
speech they frequently identify themselves not only as natives or residents of a
particular region, but also as members of a particular social class, age group, ethnic
background, or other social characteristic.
1.3.2 Social dialects
The development of the systematic investigation of dialect in society has challenged
some of the perspective of both linguistics and dialectology. Linguistics focused on
the formal structure of language as an abstract cognitive system, with a little
attention given to the kinds of variants that were central to the examination of
dialect variation. Dialectology however, focused on the distribution of particular
variants in geographical space and time, from a sociolinguistics point of view, the
popular perceptions of dialect patterns are simpler and less complex than the
objective reality of dialect distribution within society.
The Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada is the first dialect study
which takes into account the social factors. The beginning of works on this
investigation in the 1930s was very much in the mould of traditional dialectology;
however fieldworkers when studying some sections were instructed to select
socially different types of informants, taking note of the social dimension of
linguistic variation in this way was an essential step, but the procedure by which
informants were classified was clearly still somewhat subjective.
22
For Kurath’s analysis, these aspects did not represent any kind of problem, because
its aim was to examine linguistic variation in a geographical context. Traditional
dialectology focussed its analysis mainly on rural dialects, and in many countries the
neglected speech was the one of people living in the cities, even if they represent the
majority; like in England where perhaps 90 per cent of the population live in towns.
This way linguists and dialectologists have been missing out a great deal of
linguistic data, and the study of urban dialects was not only an interesting but a
necessary task; in fact Urban dialects were considered to be less conservative,
because they often result from immigration and from neighbouring rural regions.
For dialectologists, the most important fact was to collect information about
conservative dialects, mainly rural ones. Social variations were not taken seriously
into account when analysing, and as a result of inclinations towards the analysis of
social urban dialect, the synchronic approach of studying language showed a rapid
development.
Many linguists studied urban varieties, neglecting the social dimension with a very
limited selection of informants; belonging most of the time to the same category of
age or gender or social class. For instance David DeCamp examined the speech of
San Francisco; he studied the speech of people known to him. Moreover Eva
Sivertsen, in her study of ‘Cockney’ speech community, published in her book
Cockney Phonology in 1960, trusted four speakers, all of them women over sixty
living in Bethnal Green.
1.3.3 Modern dialectology
A crucial part in the development of sociolinguistics is due to the different
traditional investigations of regional dialects, although the original goal was purely
geographical.
Historically, dialectology has moved from studying variations within
geographically-distributed dialects to the analysis of linguistic features that correlate
with social aspects. Traditional dialectologist were interested in studying rural
dialects where they can get the most conservative data for their investigations with
the aim of diachronic comparisons, today’s sociolinguists analyze linguistic variable
occurrence that shows a relationship with social variables. Unlike structural linguists
for whom language studies should be context free, the sociolinguists have totally
rejected the concept of language as a homogenous entity and consider it as a
23
heterogeneous active system with variation to be taken into account and linguistic
change to be clarified.
With the development of modern dialectology, that is largely due to Labov’s (1963,
1966a) pioneering research and those of his followers, the classical speech
community model is no longer held, particularly in the urban context, where
diversity results a wide linguistic variation. Halliday (1978: 155):
“The urban ‘speech community’ is a heterogeneous unit, showing diversity not only
between one individual and another but also within an individual. And this leads us
to recognize a basic fact about urban speech: that the language itself a variable [….]
the variation is intrinsic in the system [….] a system with a great deal of flexibility
in it.”
Such a diversity has previously been studied along three synchronic dimensions
(geographical, social and stylistic), and also on all linguistic levels (phonological,
grammatical and lexical).
1.4 The Speech community
Language is the tenure of the individual and society, when someone speaks he gives
an impression to the hearer about him, as an individual and as a member of a
particular group of people, it can be a country, a tribe or a social class. A society
may involve a group of speakers which would share the same linguistic behaviour,
the same language, dialect, or variety; and so they are members of the same “speech
community”, a term widely used by sociolinguists, Hudson (1996) used the term
“linguistic community” to refer to the same meaning.
Speech communities can be defined at different dimensions of generalization, from
communities of rehearsal to the local neighbourhood to the nation state. They can
also be recognized in terms of social measures such as ethnicity, social class,
gender, and so on.
A simpler description, used even by ordinary people, is that “speech community” is
no more than a social group whose speech characteristics are the same. But
sociolinguists have other opinions and different explanations which may give the
notion that “speech community” is a very complicated term to define, however
linguists can merely suppose that a language is what is spoken by a distinct speech
24
community, but because a speech community can only be defined in provisos of its
means of linguistic interaction, it needs more precise explanations.
A community sharing the same language with the same system was the main idea
with which Bloomfield defined speech community, he said: “a speech community is
a group of people who interact by means of speech” (1933:42). In contrast, Hymes
(1974) sees that Bloomfield’s definition is not accurate, he explains that it is
impossible to associate language and society when we lack a clear understanding of
the nature of language, on the other hand mutual intelligibility and communication
between members of the speech community is what Gumperz (1962) spots when
said: “We will define (linguistic community) as a social group which may be either
monolingual or multilingual, held together by frequency of social interaction
patterns and set off from the surrounding areas by weakness in the lines of
communication”
Gumperz adjoins that there should be some particularly linguistic differences
between the members of a speech community and another, he writes (1968): “The
speech community: any human aggregate characteristics by regular and frequent
interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar
aggregates by significant differences in languages.”
Here again the use of one language for a speech community, according to Gumperz
is not required, unlike John Lyons who insists on the existence of a shared language
or dialect he writes (1970:326): “speech community: all the people who use a given
language (or dialect)”, this means that a language or a dialect is all what a speech
community needs so that it can be limited, neither social nor cultural unities are
required; therefore, it may be probable to delimit speech communities as far as it is
possible to delimit languages and dialects with no indication to which groups use
them.
Another criterion is added by Charles Hockett (1958:8) in defining a speech
community he says: “each language defines a speech community: the whole set of
people who communicate with each other, either directly or indirectly, via the
common language.” for Hockett, communication between members of the same
speech community is a basic criterion so that if two groups speak the same language
but have no contact with each other at all, they would be counted as different
communities.
According to Suzan Romaine (2000:23): “ a speech community is a group of people
who do not necessary share the same language, but share a set of norms and rules
for the use of language.” Here the use of the same language is not sufficient to draw
25
limits for a speech community Romaine adds the use of the same norms and rules
for the spoken language.
Besides the linguistic criteria that classified a speaker among a speech community,
some linguists reached that there are other characteristics which make individuals
feel that they are members of the same speech community and in this sense William
Labov (1972:120) says:
“The speech community is not defined by any marked agreement in the
use of language elements so much as by participation in a set of shared
norms; these norms may be observed in overt types of evaluative
behaivour, and by the uniformity of abstract patterns of variation which
are invariants in respect to particular levels of usage.”
This definition demonstrates that speech community is not related just to language.
The English language, for example, is spoken in many places in the world, but it is
definitely used in a wide variety of ways in communities that are almost,
completely, isolated from each other, such as South Africa, New Zealand, and even
in China, on the other hand a single community can make use of more than one
language.
These definitions can be all considered as correct, because they provide us with
definitions to groups of people who have something in common. These people are
described on the basis of shared languages or dialects, interacting by means of
speech, a given range of varieties and rules for use, or a given range of attitudes to
varieties, these factors may differ completely. There is no opportunity to gather
these definitions in a general one because they are reflecting different phenomena,
what can gather them is that they are all definitions or proposed criteria to limit or
describe “speech community”.
In order to distinguish a group of people from the rest of the world, we need more
than one characteristic, which must be very significant in the social lives of the
members. Yet, the question of which definition leads to indisputable distinction of
communities in this sense is still not answered.
“a group of people who use a given language or dialect”, is considered as the
simplest definition of the speech community. It is in truth vague to say that a
community has no more than a common language to be distinguished, and as far as
the factor of interaction emerges, we have just to say that there will be other shared
characteristics besides it, nevertheless different speech communities may
incorporate in many composite ways. For instance a community defined in terms of
26
interaction, may comprise parts of several communities which are defined in terms
of shared language varieties.
The following definition might be the most inclusive view which involves all the
previous definitions and gives many shared characteristics that a group of speakers
should have to form a speech community
Robert Le Page (1985) says:
Each individual creates the systems for his verbal behaviour so that they all
resemble those of the group or groups with which from time to time he may wish to
be identified, to the extent that
a- he can identify the groups
b- he has both opportunity and ability to observe and analyze their behavioural
system
c- his motivation is sufficiently strong to impel him to choose, and to adapt his
behaviour accordingly
d- he is still able to adapt his behaviour.
Hudson considers this definition as a very satisfactory one, it assembles all the
above incompatible definitions and replaces them by a single definition; “group” is,
therefore, a relative concept and so is the speech community. The individual may
belong to different communities according to many criteria; he can speak the
language of one community and share many traditions, customs, and norms with
another, but in one instance he will identify only one of them especially when taking
into consideration Le Page’s definition.
A speech community can be classified as “homogenous” or “heterogeneous”, De
Saussure supposes that a homogenous speech community is the one whose members
share a common code and the use they make of this code is represented in an
individual and idiosyncratic substance. On the other hand Loveday (1996: 16) has
suggested that communities might be categorized according to the degree of bi- or
multi-lingualism. For Loveday classification of speech communities results from
exposing (them to different contact settings, he proposes six “archetypal contact
settings,” each categorized by different arrays of contact facts. At one limit of the
scale we find quite homogeneous communities of monolinguals most of whom have
slight or no direct contact with speakers of other languages, still the little influence
is introduced by the mass media or by teaching languages in school.
In the middle of the scale we find a variety of situations involving different degrees
of bi- or multi-lingualism within the community, this situation results from contact
27
between linguistic minorities and a dominant host group. Finally, at the other
extreme of the scale, highly heterogeneous communities are placed and
characterized by high degrees of individual multilingualism,
The concept “speech community” has sometimes been difficult to pin down but it
has proven useful and enlightening in the study of language in its social and cultural
setting.
1.5 Linguistic variable
All humans when using languages, spoken or even signed; have various ways of
saying the same thing. Some variation is unplanned and transient; it may occur from
the mechanical limits of the speech organs, and may not be entirely under the
speaker’s control. There are more systematic variations which correspond to options
speakers may consciously or unconsciously choose (Coulmas 2005); in fact the
existence of a choice between two or more dissimilar but linguistically equivalent
variants defines the “linguistic variable”.
Speakers in Aberdeen, north-east Scotland, for example, have the choice between
the terms “boy”, “loon”, “laddie” or “boy” when referring to a young male person,
or between “quine”, “lassie”, or “girl” in reference to a young female.
Sociolinguistics aims to understand the relationship between social factors and
linguistic variation. It directs linguistic restrictions with respect to variability, even
though it is clear that sociolinguists are more concerned with theoretical ideas of the
scientific study of language.
Long before the rise of urban dialectology, speakers had previously been observed
to vary some characteristics in their linguistic act, as an example English traditional
dialectologists, made remarks about the different uses of glottal stop [ ?] as a
variant of /t/ in words such as ‘but’ or ‘little’ in certain dialects, they referred to such
differences in speech as ‘free variation’ or ‘dialect mixture’ and they regarded these
variations as being with a difficult manageability. However, most linguists have
confessed today that variation is not free, but controlled by social and linguistic
variables, in fact the variable is considered by Chambers and Trudgill (1980) as a
‘structural unit’ that may be linked to such linguistic units as phonemes or
morphemes: “a linguistic unit with two or more variants involved in co-variation
with other social and/ or linguistic variables.” (p.60)
28
Correspondingly, Labov (1970) describes the sociolinguistic variable as: “One
which is correlated with some non-linguistic variable of the social context of the
speaker, the addressee, the audience, the setting…” (Labov, 1970:66)
After Labov’s Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966a), a progress
has been realized in the study of sociolinguistic variation, with the help of the
methodology of quantitative analysis. Most sociolinguists admitted that Labov’s
initial work and its progress have been essential in the development of the
‘sociolinguistic’ theory which intends to make logical statement about the relation
between language use and the social patterns.
In fact, a solid methodological way for the study of language in its social context
was laid down thanks to Labov’s empirical results, in one of his articles (1970:180)
he explained:
“……in the practices and techniques that have been worked out are embodied many
important principals of linguistic and social behaviour. Close examination of these
methodological assumptions and findings will tell us a great deal about the nature of
discourse and functions of language.”
Some sociolinguists, on the other hand, have observed that constructing a
sociolinguistic theory on such basics is not easy, they have proposed that wide
spread studies of different speech communities are necessary, to find a more general
theory, for instance Romaine (1982) considers Labov’s patterns as: “Testable
hypotheses concerning the basic principals underlying the organization, social
differentiation and change of speech communities” (p. 2)
A linguistic variable may have different statuses depending on the degree of
consciousness shown by the speaker towards such or such variable, Labov has
distinguished among what he calls indicators, markers, and stereotypes, he gives the
term “markers“ to the sociolinguistic variables that : “not only show social
distribution, but also stylistic differentiation.” (Labov, 1970: 188), in fact “markers”
are variables that speakers are conscious of, while “indicators” are variables with
less awareness, he defined indicators as variables that : “are used by each individual
in more or less the same way in any context” (id. p.188)
On the other hand a stereotype is a popular and mindful characterization of the
speech of a particular group, some times a stereotype is considered as stigmatized,
because it gives people a ready categorized description.
29
The aim of this research work is to study the sociolinguistic variation in the speech
community of Béchar, but at first we have to know what is meant by the “linguistic
variable”.
The linguistic variable is a linguistic item which has alternative variants that can
replace each other without changing the sense of the word; it co-varies according to
different variables such as age, gender, social class, and ethnic group. Wardhaugh
(2006:145) says in this respect: “The important fact to remember is that a linguistic
variable is an item in the structure of a language, an item that has alternate
realizations, as one speaker realizes it one way and another different way or the
same speaker realizes it differently on different occasions.”
For instance the word “walking” is sometimes pronounced as “walkin”; the final
sound in this word (ng) is called the linguistic variable with two variants [n] and
[ing]. The same is for the variable /q/ which has different variants in the Algerian
speech community such as: [q], [k], [g], and [?]. The variable /h/ has also two
variants in words like “when” and “how” these are [h] and [0], [s] is another
variable which has three variants [s], [z], and [iz] in words like “coats”, “pens”, and
“dishes”, variables of these kinds often call for a sociolinguistic interpretation
because no other kind of analyses is appropriate.
Language variation happens at all levels of language that is why sociolinguistics
distinguishes different types of variables: these are phonetic, phonological,
morphological, lexical, and syntactic.
1. The phonetic variable takes place when the same phonological pattern has
different phonetic realizations, for example the English phoneme /t/ has a variety of
alternative pronunciations such as: a glottal stop in words like ”not”, a [d] like “tap”,
alveolar stop, alveolar aspirate with an [s] in endings.
2. The phonological variable takes place when the same lexical unit has alternate
phonological structures. For example, lexical items like “international” can have
stress on the first or the second syllable.
3. The morphological variable appears when the same word has alternate
morphological structures, these certainly exist in the presence or the absence of the
suffix “s” with the third person singular in the present tense. Example: in Norwich,
“he walk” is used in the local form, and “he walks” represents the standard one.
4. The lexical variable is noticed when the same meaning is expressed in two
different lexical items or when two lexical items are partial synonyms. For instance,
30
all these sentences: “he kicked the bucket”, “he passed away”, and, “he popped off”
are used to say that “some body has died”.
5. The Syntactic variable occurs when the same meaning is expressed by different
syntactic structures, examples of this kind are observed at the beginning of the
English relative clause which may be introduced by “that”, or by “wh” pronoun
such as: “who”, “which”, or nothing at all. For instance all of the following
sentences: “the article that I wrote”, “the article which I wrote”, or “the article I
wrote” carry the same meaning.
For example: speakers in North America distinguish between the vowels used in
“cot” and “caught”, but others do not. In other words; either one differentiates
between the vowels or not, this has no social significance. In contrast, a marker
carries with it social significance. Members of the same speech community are
aware of markers and their distribution which is clearly related to the social
groupings and to the styles of speaking. For instance: the pronunciation of “r” in
words like “car” and “cart” in New York City varies according to different
circumstances. Stereotype is a linguistic variable which characterizes the speech of a
particular group, such as New York use of “boid” for “bird”, “toity Toid Street” for
“thirty third street and soon.
1.6 Conclusion
Languages, like cultures, are rarely sufficient unto themselves; the need of
intercourse brings the speakers of one language or dialect into direct or indirect
contact with neighboring or culturally dominant languages and dialects. The contact
may be friendly or hostile; it may consist of a borrowing or interchange of spiritual
goods, arts, science, and religion.
We have initiated this research work by giving the definitions of some key concepts
in sociolinguistics that present a sign of the subject matter, speech community is one
of those concepts, a term that received popular interest among many linguists
around the world, it is really required in this research work so as to clarify the norms
and rules that govern group membership. These rules will be noticed around the
community of Béchar in order to ensure the reader that it really forms a speech
community sharing the same verbal repertoire, and guarantees that the speech which
31
is under investigation is in fact used by a group of people not just randomly
distributed members; the above concept is topped by the description of other
language varieties, these are used in order to classify the speech of Béchar as a
language, dialect, or a variety. The linguistic variables explained previously will
take a very important share in our research, and because we are in the domain of
sociolinguistics we have to take into account the social factors and incorporate them,
these are age and gender; the other factors will not be considered for reasons
mentioned before. Language is one of the significant aspects in determining speech
communities. Algeria, as one model, takes Arabic as its standard language together
with a number of various languages that exist in secondary positions. In the
following chapter we will analyze the linguistic and the sociolinguistic situation of
Algeria emphasizing on its language repertoires and its classification as a
multilingual speech community.
32
Chapter two :
Aspects of Sociolinguistic
Variation in Algeria
33
2.1 Introduction
The linguistic situation in Algeria is described as complex and diverse because of
the co-existence of more than one language, the main languages spoken by the
community are; Arabic, Berber, and French. The official language of Algeria is
Arabic according to the Constitution of 1963; Berber has been recognized as a
national language after the constitutional amendment of May 8th, 2002. These two
languages are the native ones of more than 99% of the Algerian population, French
has been considered as the second language and it is still used in government,
culture, media, and education.
According to Benali M.R (1993:26), Arabic becomes the most used language in the
Maghreb, from all the existing ones in North Africa. This has taken place
progressively because of various factors; the most important one is that Arabic is the
language of Islam. Another reason is that Arabic at a given time was the medium of
knowledge, science, and scholarship; it was the equivalent of English language
nowadays.
Arabic in its colloquial forms is the native language of most Algerians; the standard
form is learned at the primary schools, and it is different from the colloquial ones
which contain a simplified phonological system.
In addition to Arabic, according to Benali (1993:26)1 French did not lose its
importance and prestige in Algeria even after the independence, it is now part of the
standard school curriculum, ethnologic estimates indicate that 20% of the population
can read and write it. Some two- thirds of Algerians have a fairly broad grasp of
French, and half speak it as a second language. Besides these two languages Berber
flourishes but gradually. Despite of the influences of other languages, mainly
Arabic, French and to a lesser extent Spanish, it is still used, because many Berber
speaking areas are mountainous and have had a natural protection against
invasions2. This is a general vision on the three spoken languages in Algeria that we
will try to study in the following sections.
1 French in present Algeria does not seem to be losing its importance and prestige four decades after the independence of
the country It is still the language of science, modernism, and opening on the world.
2Benali Mohamed (1993:26).
34
English is also used in Algeria but as a second foreign language after French, it is
taught from the first year of Middle School because of its status as a global
language; the number of English speakers in Algeria is very limited, most of them
are young people, who started to be very interested in English after the widespread
of the internet, in fact, no one acquires English for daily communication; individuals
who are competent in English are either teachers or students at university. Algeria
has also integrated in its antique repertoire other spoken languages before the
coming of Arabic and French such as: the Mediterranean Lingua Franca or Sabir,
and Ladino which was formerly spoken by some Algerian Jews, around Oran, after
1830 they had gradually disappeared and their functions were taken over by French.
35
2.2 Arabic: CA/MSA and Algerian Arabic:
Arabic is a Central Semitic language, it dates back to the first century of the
Common Era although its origins go as far as the period of Ibrahim the Patriarch.
Arabic is the largest language in its Semitic family spoken in 22 countries from
Morocco and Mauritania in the west of Africa to Iraq in the eastern edge of the
Arabian Peninsula. These countries are represented by more than 280 million people
who all regard it as their first language. The Arabic language generally comes into
two forms: Standard Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic (CA/MSA) and dialectal
Arabic, although the difference is not between Classical Arabic and Modern
Standard Arabic, a distinction is sometimes made. CA is the language of the Koran;
it is considered as the formal version that was used in the Arabic peninsula. It was
also the language of poetry during the pre-Islamic era, and the language of royal and
princely courts during the Islamic history, it is “….the language of Islam. It is
codified and the vehicle of a huge body of classical literature…., it encompassed in
ancient poetry, grammar books and mainly in the Koran, in which Classical Arabic
was revealed and it is still preserved”3
Modern Standard Arabic is the modern complement of Classical Arabic. It is the
official language of all the countries in the Arab Nation, and it is used in the
educational spheres. Ennaji (1991:19) defines it as:
“..… standardized and codified to the extent that it can be understood by different
Arabic speakers in the Maghreb and in the Arab World at large. It has the
characteristics of a modern language serving as the vehicle of a universal culture.”
According to Benali Mouhamed (1993:28), the most important difference between
CA and MSA lies in the vocabulary. MSA reveals the needs of modern expression
while CA reflects the needs of older styles. In order to avoid any confusion, it is
decided to use the term Standard Arabic (SA) in this research work to group the two
above concepts and to refer to the variety of Arabic. SA is, therefore, the language
used in formal and official circumstances. The linguistic policy in Algeria, after the
independence, insists on recuperating the national language and step by step,
reducing the importance of French. Therefore a process of Arabization has been
spread; and all the Algerian constitutions proclaimed that Arabic, or SA, is the
language of the country. 3 Ennaji (1991:7-8)
36
In addition to SA, there are various forms of Arabic which exist in different parts of
Algeria; these are regional varieties with different accents. Algerian Arabic is
spoken in everyday communications by the vast majority of Algerians, it fades into
Morocco and Tunisian Arabic along the borders, in the South there is a group of
Bedouin dialects.
The common feature of AA is its inclusion of many borrowed words from French
with the general syntax of the mother tongue, some of these words are: [ku:zina]
“kitchen”,[mə∫wara] “handkerchief”, [∫ombra] “room”, etc. This linguistic
phenomenon has resulted from the French occupation of Algeria. Linguistically
speaking, AA differs considerably from SA, but shares many features with it. In
addition to the lexical variation between the two, AA drops the case endings of the
written language as in [darun] which becomes [dar] “house”, [bæbun] becomes
[bæb] “door”, the initial article of the standard form {-al} is also omitted in words
like: [l3ərs], instead of [3ursun], and [lbarəħ] instead of [al bariħa] “yesterday”
…etc.
Variation does not occur only between SA and AA, but between the Algerian
dialects too, one aspect appears in the use of many lexical items which varies from
one region to another, and sometimes even between villages, the degree of mutual
intelligibility differs from one region to another, the dialect of Adrar is not
understood by those who live in Algiers, and in turn the speech patterns of Tindouf
are definitely misunderstood not only in Annaba, Constantine, or Oran, but even by
the other southern areas such as Béchar, Ouergla and others.
Some aspects of variation within AA dialects appear in the use of items or
expressions which vary from one place to another. Example: “car” is called
[ţonobile] in Algiers, [loţo] in Béchar, [taksi] in Constantine, and [lwatira] in some
parts of Tlemcen and in Tindouf it is called [lwatta], also “boys” is [∫a∫ra] in Oran,
[dra:ri] in Anaba, [ləwla:d] in Béchar, and [tərka] in Tindouf , In other cases, the
same word has different meanings creating a kind of semantic variation. For
instance in Constantine: [sələktaħ] means “I paid him”, while in Béchar it means “I
saved him”.
At the phonological level all the Algerian dialects share 24 consonants in addition
to the long and short vowels such as: /æ/ as in [klæ] (he ate), [i:] in [qri:t] (I read),
/u:/ in [tilifu:n], (telephone), /i/ in [hija] (she), perhaps one of the most distinguished
feature of Algerian Arabic is the collapse of short vowels in some positions, thus,
the Standard Arabic [ramad] (ashes) became [rmad], and [kalam] (talk) is [klæm],
37
this leads us to say that Algerian Arabic always shortens the syllable structure found
in the standard form like in: [ħadʒara], “stone” is [ħadʒra], we can also observe that
in many Algerian dialects the vowel glides [ai] and [au] substituted for the long
vowels [i:] and [u:] as it appears in these two examples: [dajn] becomes [di:n]
(debt), /lawn/ is [lu:n] (colour), some Bedouin dialects keep the same forms of Cl.Ar
.
Phonological variation is noticeable particularly, in the use of phonemes which
differs from town to town, for instance: /q/ is pronounced as: /q/ in Algiers, /g/ in
Oran, /ʔ/ in Tlemcen and /k/ in Jijel thus “near” is: [qri:b] in Algiers, [gri:b] in
Bechar, and [ʔri:b] in Tlemcen. another example of variation is in the pronunciation
of the third singular masculine objective pronoun. Example, [ktəbtah], “I wrote it”
is said [ktəbtu:] in other dialects, [səqsiteh], “I asked him” instead of [səqsit].
Adding the phoneme /k/ before each verb is one phonological aspect of the south
western dialects, like that of Béchar and Adrar, it makes their speech similar to that
of Morocco. Example: [kangu:l], “I say”, [kanəmʃi], “I go”, [kanfhəm], “I
understand”…etc, eastern dialects have similar accent to the one of Tunisia even
when speaking French.
In Adrar the two phonemes /∫/ and /ʒ/ are recognized differently from the other
parts, even the bordering ones, it is called ‘sibilant-merging dialect4 Example: “two”
is pronounced as [zu:z] instead of [zu:ʒ], and “sun” [səms] rather than [∫əms].
In terms of gender, Algerian Arabic masculine nouns and adjectives generally end
with a consonant, while the feminine nouns generally end with an “a”, and most
feminine nouns are in fact feminized versions of masculine nouns, such as
Nassim/Nassima, Amin/Amina…etc. Examples: [kəlb] a “dog”, [kəlba] a female
“dog”, [tfol] a “little boy”, [tofla] “a little girl”, [tkil] for” heavy” and [tkila] for a
female’s description .
Most of the dialects use approximately the same pronoun’s form of standard Arabic
in “you” [nta] for “man” which is [anta] in Cl.Ar and [nti] for “woman” instead of
[anti] except few places like Tlemcen where [ntina] is used for “man” and [nta] for
“woman”. Broken plural exists in AA like in Cl.Ar; it is used for some masculine
and feminine words. Example: plural of [raʒəl] is [rʒəl] or [roʒəla] "men" and the
plural of [dif] guest is [diaf]. Regular plural is used too, the suffix {-un} used for the
4 (Bouhania, B. 2007Sociolinguistic and Dialectological description of Adrar Arabic, Unpublished Doctoral thesis.
University of Oran Es-Sénia)
38
nominative in Cl.Ar is not use in AA, in contrast the suffix {-in} used in Cl.Ar for
the accusative and the genitive exists in AA. Example: [mbela3], “closed” is
[mbel3in], [sən], and “tooth” is [sənnin].
For feminine nouns, the plural is mostly obtained by adding the suffix {-a:t}.
Example: [ʒa:ra] “a neighbor” the plural is [ʒara:t], negation is expressed in AA
usually in two parts, with the particle {ma} before the verb, and /ʃ/ after the verb, or
words like: [walu:] in combination with {ma} to express more complex types of
negation.
Example: [xdəmt] “I worked” becomes [maxdəmtʃ] “I didn’t work”
[klæ] “he ate” [maklæʃ] “he didn’t eat”
[ʃefnæh] “we saw him” [maʃefnæhʃ] “we didn’t see him”
For adjectives, the negation in most of the Algerian dialects is formed by adding the
particle [maʃi]. Example: [mlih] “good”, [maʃimlih] “not good”.
There are two types of derivation forms: Causative, Passive. Derivation is made by
adding suffixes or by doubling consonants;
Causative: is obtained by doubling consonants :
Example: [xrəj] “to go out" it is [xarrəʒ]
[dxəl] "to enter" is [daxxəl]
Passive: This derivation is similar to Berber and does not exist in Classical
Arabic, where the passive voice uses vowel changes and not verb derivation; it is
obtained by prefixing the verb with {t- / tt- / tn-/ n-}.
Example: [qtəl] "to kill" is [tnəqtəl] "to be killed"
[sraq] "to steal" is [təsrak] "to be stolen".
Variations within Algerian dialects and sometimes within a dialect make “mutual
intelligibility” difficult to occur but the Arab origins of the majority of Algerian
dialects makes them understandable to a certain extent, mainly when the words used
in a conversation are very near to Cl.Ar. Otherwise, it is difficult for a person from
Kenadsa to be understood by another one in Annaba or Oran if he says: [?a∫ had əl
γriba xizu: mqarha: mzəlfa:] (what’s that! the carrots are in a very bad case).
39
2.3 Berber
The Berber dialects are spoken in many parts of Algeria but largely in Kabylia, in
the Aures, and in some villages in the Sahara, it has the status of a “national
language”. The following presentation of the Berber dialects of Algeria which are
classified geographically includes mainly all the existing ones:
In the north:
“Kabyle” in Kabylia about 7,5 million inhabitants in Algeria specially in
Algiers, Béjaïa, Tizi Ouzou, Bouïra, Sétif and Boumerdas.
“Chaouia” in the Aures about at least 5 million inhabitants specially in Batna,
Khenchela, Souk Ahras, Oum el Bouaghi, and Tebessa.
“Chenoua“in Tipaza Province.
“Tarifit“around Arzew, and Tlemcen, and Sidi Bel Abbes.
Perhaps extinct, in western Algeria: Beni Snous, Achacha, Ouarsenis, Bel Halima,
Haraoua.
In the Sahara:
“Tumzabt“ in the Mzab
“Ouargli“ in Ouargla
dialects of “Touat“ and “Gourara“ (called "Taznatit" by the Ethnologists, this
name in fact refers to most of the Zenati languages)
dialects of “Touggourt” and “Temacine”
“Tidikelt”
“Tamahaq“, the dialect of the Tuareg of the Hoggar
"Tachelhit", the dialect of the western ksours and also Figuig.
There is no ultimate classification of all the Berber dialects in Algeria, in fact Berber
varies from one locality to another; ethnicity plays a role in variation, some of these
dialects are mutually intelligible, others are not. There is no standard orthography
for Berber, for instance, Tamazight has 41 basic sounds, 38 consonants and, the
Tuareg varieties have developed some extra long and short vowels. The growing use
of Kabyle as a modern written language has increased the use of the adapted Roman
script.
The Lexicon comprises an important domain of dialectal variations among
Tamazight dialects; there are many loan words from Arabic, French and Latin. Loan
words are morphologically adapted in the Tamazight word structure, furthermore in
Tamazight structure morphemes conveying grammatical information such as tense,
40
gender, number and person do not constitute autonomous affixes, such elements
rather appear as compound phonemes, vowels more often, within words.
Vocabulary differences should be considered as initially reflecting lexical richness,
the most important criterion of dialectal variation is phonological.
The different varieties of Tamazight may be classified into three different groups:
plosive, fricative and affricate dialects, “plosive dialect” refers to the dialects that
have kept the original plosive sounds as plosives (mainly Tachelhit or Tuareg
varieties), while they have been developed into fricatives in “fricative dialects” like:
Kabylian, central Moroccan Tamazight and Tachawit, or even affricates in “
affricate dialect” (mainly those called Zenete in the literature among which Tumzabt
and Mauritanian varieties) .
The group that is characterized as affricate has phonologically gone a lot further,
some varieties such as Tarifit are difficult to classify as they have already moved
from the fricative status but not enough to consider them as affricate. These
differences do not reflect country boundaries but are older than the constitution of
the present different states, in Algeria for instance, all these three varieties coexist.
These differences reflect the classification of inhabitant groups very often referred
to as the Masmouda, Sanhadja and Zenete.
Although there are differences between the Berbers and the Arabs, but they
share the same linguistic, cultural and social events, there are some similarities like:
[tlæta] (three), [roh] (go), [xamməm] (think), [khdəm] (work), [di:n] (religion)…etc.
These similarities between Algerian Arabic and Berber refers to the common
presence of both communities, a common feature of Algerian Arabic and Berber is
the occurrence of French words with the general syntax of the mother tongue, for
example: [stilu:jət, stilu:jən] (pens), [ku:zina, taku:zinət] (kitchen).
41
2.4 French
After the independence, language presented an ideological, social and political,
concern in Algeria. While the government followed a strategy of linguistic
Arabization of education, but the important position of the French language in
Algeria was not profoundly affected by this policy and French continued to be used
in the spoken and the written forms, however; it is nowadays part of the standard
school curriculum and it is largely understood by people. It has been estimated that
about 20% of the Algerian population can read and write in French, other sources
estimated a much larger percentage. In the late 1990s, a political debate took place
in Algeria concerning the replacement of French by English in the educational
system, the government decided to keep French. It is, according to President Ben
Bella (1962-1965), an essential tool for the acquirement of modern techniques. In
the same sense; Ahmed Taleb El Ibrahimi, a former Minister of Education and one
of the leading proponents of the Arabization policy, considers Arabic as the
appropriation of the Algerian soul and French as a window open on the world, for
Miliani(2001:17) : “French is no longer the property of the old enemy. French as a
world language is a tool (linguistic, cultural, social, economic, and technical) for
humanity, beyond the political borders”.
The use of French varies among the population, many people can understand it but
not every one can speak it or write it correctly. Geographically speaking, the
majority of the northern people can master French more than the southerners, may
be because of the French concentration on the north. Because Southern people were
not, effectively, in contact with the French, most of them were Nomads, however, in
some southern villages like Knadsa, French people lived and stayed even after the
independence, and as a linguistic result of this contact, Knadsa is the home town of
many great writers in French like Malika Moukadam and Yasmina Khadra, and the
dialect of this town contains a lot of borrowings from French language.
Since independence, important sciences such as: medicine, architecture,
chemistry, and others are studied in French, materials, medicines, foods, have
notices written in French, including the local ones, for instance on a date’s jam pot
you find mainly words in French, like “confiture de dates” or “ingredients naturels”.
Some Algerian sociolinguists consider this kind of linguistic colonization more
“dangerous” than the political one. The charge of liberating Algerians from using
French, is very hard following this point of view, and excluding the use of such
42
language, will create a linguistic conflict, because French exists in the majority of
our dialects; it becomes part of our daily communication, our history, our culture; it
hardly happens, to hear someone saying “nafoura” rather than “jet d’eau” or [ʒido],
“madrassa” in stead of “l’école” or [liku:l] “el barid” instead of “la poste” or [
lbo∫ţa], or “lawhat el mafatih” and not “clavier” and so on.
43
2.5 Algeria, a Multilingual Speech Community
According to Martin J. Ball (2005), competence in more than one language can be
approached both at an individual or a social level, and depending on the perspective,
different dimensions must be emphasized. In many parts of the world an ability to
speak more than one language is not at all notable. A monolingual individual,
according to R.Wardhaugh (2006), would be regarded as a misfit lacking an
important skill in society that makes him able to interact freely with the speakers of
other languages with whom regular contact is made in ordinary conversations.
These various languages are usually acquired naturally or learned through
educational approaches, and the shifts from one to another are made without
hesitation, the present research work is not concerned with multilingualism in
Algeria, but there are a few linguistic facts that have to be cited here. The Algerian
population was linguistically influenced during the French colonization, that today,
nearly fifty years after the Algerian independence (1962), French continues to play
an important role in spoken as well as in written domains; in addition to the great
number of French loan words integrated into Algerian Arabic, many Algerian
people understand French and use it. Dendane(1993) explained that until recently,
French was seen as prestige language, conferring advantages in the domains of
education and work; French is often mixed with Arabic in a form of code switching
or code mixing, for instance it is common to hear people say [di:na la voiture ( or
/loto/) wəm∫ina lla pisi:n] “we took the car and we went to the swimming pool” , a
sentence where French loan words are “voiture” and “piscine” are accompanied
with their articles.
Studying multilingual speech communities, some sociolinguists have tried to plan a
sociolinguistic ‘typology’ of languages (Steward 1972) or as Ferguson (1964) did
before to propose a “sociolinguistic profile formula” for a given political unit, for
comparative purposes. Ferguson classified languages in three main categories: main
languages, minor languages and languages of special status; the languages are
classified according to the political or social statuses, some being official, national,
and others standard or vernacular and still others literary, etc. Without going into the
details of such categorizations, it should be noted that the Algerian sociolinguistic
profile demonstrates special characteristics on the basis of which specific
sociolinguistic patterns could be drawn: both Cl.Ar (that is the official and national
language of the state, but only used in certain formal situations) and French are
44
considered as prestigious languages for different reasons, thus the Algerian
linguistic “picture” appears to be very complex though the ‘low’ varieties of Arabic,
as we shall see presently, as opposed to Cl.Ar, remain of major use.
2.5.1 Multilingualism in Algeria
The co-existence of Arabic, in its two forms, besides French, and Berber makes
Algeria a complex sociolinguistic situation, not all the Algerians speak Berber, and
not the entire master French, the only language that can be spoken by all the
population is Arabic, or the Algerian dialect. Generally speaking Algeria is a
multilingual community, but the use of those three languages depends on the
individual, i.e. Which languages he is able to master and for which situation
alternately. Wardhaugh (2006: 96) says: “People who are bilingual or multilingual
do not necessary have exactly the same abilities in the languages (or varieties); in
fact that kind of parity may be exceptional.”
By a simple observation into the Algerian speech community, we can see that most
of the Algerian population has at least some level of multilingual competence,
something which indicates that adding a second language doesn’t need superhuman
or unnatural accomplishment, in fact we hardly hear Algerians speaking without
using at least a few words in French and Berber, any one can say, or at least
understand, “c’est fini”, “trois jours”, or [argaz], [azu:l fəlawon]…etc, the use of
words differs according to the level of competency in languages for instance Berber
of French.
Sridhar (1996: 50) says:
“Multilingualism involving balanced, native like command of all the
languages in the repertoire is rather uncommon. Typically, multilinguals
have varying degrees of command of the different repertoires. The
differences in competence in the various languages might range from
command of a few lexical items, formulaic expressions such as greetings,
and rudimentary conversational skills all the way to excellent command of
the grammar and vocabulary and specialized register and styles.”
Such competence doesn’t give any evidence that multilingualism is particularly a
conversationally fluency in all these languages, but at least we can say that many
words of those languages are known by everyone and even used in their
conversation. Such linguistic competence is clearly developed among the Kabylians
who have the ability to speak Arabic, French, and Berber; the latter represents their
45
mother tongue, Arabic is the language they learn at school, and French is the second
foreign language which they sometimes learn at home even before going to school,
though most the old people speak only Berber and French.
In the Algerian speech community, Multilingualism results from alternate use of
three languages, that exist because of different circumstances explained formerly;
Algerian speakers can easily communicate with the French, some of them can
interact with the Berber speakers of other countries, and of course all of us can be
mutually intelligible to a certain extent with the other Arabic speaking countries.
Many definitions of Multilingualism do not refer to the possibility that more than
one language can originate in one community; rather they highlight the idea that
multilingualism requires more than two distinct languages in the same community,
this circumstance can be found in Algeria, both AA and Berber are considered as the
native languages of most of the Algerians.
The classification of Algeria as a uni-modal5 or multi-modal6 nation depends on the
particular group concerned, in fact language decisions are made essentially on
nationalism7 rather than nationism8, moreover, the educational objectives of the
Algerian school and the curriculum as a whole, has been equipped to stimulate
feelings of nationalism as a counter to ethnicity, thus school is very significant as
part of the overall policy which started with the execution of the Arabization
process, reinforced by Algeria’s nationalization of the teaching staff. Teaching
classical Arabic has been a very complex issue in education, since 1962 the
government’s main objective was to unite the nation, and one of the most important
ways was to bring the mother tongue into the educational prospect, but some
teachers were neither sufficiently ready for the abrupt transition, nor linguistically
prepared to explain effectively in Arabic, the new concepts in the various subjects.
French is now officially a “foreign language” as English, German, and Spanish,
nevertheless it still plays an important role in the school system. These changes have
systematically affected the role and the status of French in Algeria, since all official
documents must be written in Arabic, on the other hand, the francophone elite did
not really accept this policy of acquisition planning.
5 Uni-modal nation is a country characterized by the existence of an indigenous language with literary tradition
alongside a language of wider communication which is left over a period of colonial rule. 6 Multi-modal nation is a country that has a number of languages with literary traditions that exist side by side, in this
case compromises have to be made in designating an official language. 7Nationalism is the feelings that develop from a sense of group identity, and nationalists are people who see themselves
as a sociocultural unit with integrative bonds. 8 Nationism is the practical concerns of governing, and nations are a political unity which tends to have one dominant
nationality.
46
2.5.2 Bilingualism in Algeria:
For sociolinguists the definition of bilingualism is still debatable, from the concept
any person can guess that it concerns the use of two languages but the degree of
mastery of both languages creates the difference in defining the term, Bloomfield
(1933) observes that:
“Bilingualism resulted from the addition of a perfectly learned foreign language to
one’s own, undiminished native tongue”
According to Martin J. Ball, Bloomfield puts emphasis on the question of degree,
for him a perfect learning of both languages is recommended, on the other hand
Weinrich (1953) defines bilingualism simply as: “the alternate use of two
languages” , a wider context is presented in Haugen’s definition (1954) which
describes a bilingual speaker as some one: “who knows two languages”, in fact
Martin J. Ball, sees that these definitions tend to limit bilingualism to equal mastery
of the two languages, while later ones have allowed much greater variation in
competence.
Baetens Beardsmore (1982), on his side, says that no reference is made about the
level of mastery of both languages, besides the gradation in bilingual usage depends
on the four primary skills.
Miliani.M (2001) regards bilingualism as the practice of using consciously and or
unconsciously in every day speech two languages alternately with a certain degree
of ability which could be mentioned in both languages. Such ability can be active,
that is with interacting, speaking, understanding, and some times writing and
reading both languages, or passive, i.e. understanding both languages, but speaking
only one correctly and neither reading nor writing in either language. Abilities that
Miliani has proposed in his view are found in the Algerian bilingualism, yet the
educated elite’s ability in Arabic and French is completely active since they can
master both languages using their four skills, illiterates seem to have passive
abilities towards those two languages, that is they can understand them but speak
only Arabic, or the Algerian dialect, and can not read or write them which is the
case for the majority of illiterate old Algerians.
After 132 years of French colonization with its policy in Algeria which aimed at
achieving at first political control, then a total domination, and with the existence of
Arabic in its different form, bilingualism became a logical result of that situation.
47
After the independence and even nowadays there is a linguistic overshadow
resulting from the presence of French, moreover the heralded solution of complete
and rapid Arabization is not really easy as it appeared, because the linguistic impact
of French is more rooted in the Algerian linguist situation .
There are two types of bilingualism in Algeria, the first is called “societal
bilingualism” which is the result of a historical process mainly the gradual control of
the entire country by France, and the second type is the “individual bilingualism”
which is the consequence of several variables mainly the regional, economic, social,
cultural, ethnic, and educational backgrounds of the individual, therefore, each
bilingual individual can be “balanced” or “unbalanced”, “balanced bilingual” refers
to the speaker who masters equally the first language (L1) and the second one (L2),
it mostly refers to those who where in a direct contact with the French during and
after the colonization, “unbalanced bilingualism” takes place when there is a
dominant and secondary language, it is represented by those whose competence is
higher in one language than the other and generally in the mother tongue.
According to Benali, Algeria is a silent model of bilingualism in which
different languages are in contact, mainly Arabic, French, and Berber which have
been in contact since a long period of time, and have affected each other,
bilingualism is also seen as a “particular” one because it is, for the majority of the
population, the result of the contact between the French language and the Algerian
dialect, and for a minority, between French and Berber, the current policy of the
country is to become free from the linguistic neocolonialism carried on by the
French language.
The educational system strategies and social characteristics caused the particularity
of bilingualism in Algeria. Children learn both Arabic and French in primary school,
they develop two systems of meaning of words, one system for the words in the first
language, and the other is for the second language, it means that languages are learnt
disjointedly and are more or less independent. This idea is of owning two systems
has been reported so by Spolesky (1998:48):
“For a number of years, there was an attempt to distinguish between
compound bilinguals whose two languages were assumed to be closely
connected, because one language had been learned after (and so through)
the other, and co-ordinate bilinguals who had learned each language in
separate contexts and so kept them distinct.”
It should be noted that bilingualism is approved as having a constructive effect on
intellectual functioning and cognitive process. The inherited linguistic diversity
48
should be considered as a positive point; for social elites an additional language is
always an important fraction of civilized life, however it has been always proved
that one’s personality broadens with the growth of the linguistic repertoire.
2.5.3 Code switching:
In the literature on the speech behaviours of bilinguals the term “code switching “
has been used in more than one sense, for Robin (1968), G. Sankoff (1972) and
Fishman (1972) it refers to the bilingual’s ability to choose one or the other of his
two languages in a particular speech situation , the choice is influenced by a number
of non- linguistic features such as topic, participants, setting and so on, Bloom and
Gumperz (1972) called this type of “code switching” : “situational switching” .
Code switching refers broadly to « alternation » between languages used by a
bi-monolingual speaker; it can arise from individual choice or be used as a major
identity marker for a group of speakers who must deal with more than one language
in their common pursuits. As Gal (1988: 247) says: “ Code switching is a
conversational strategy used to establish, cross or destroy group boundaries; to
create, evoke or change Interpersonal relations with their rights and obligations.
Code-switching (also called code-mixing) can occur in conversation between
speakers’ turns or within a single speaker’s turn. In the latter case it can occur
between sentences (intersentential code switching), like in: [wa∫ mən ħala hadi nta3
les pauvres sinistres rahu:m sabri:n aprés les inondations], or within a single
sentence (intrasententially) like: [wəkta∫ jmedu: les diplômes nta3na].
In this chapter, code switching follows Poplack’s definition (1980:583) “the
alternation of two languages within a single discourse, sentence, or constituent “.
Concerning Algerian views towards code switching it would appear that a confuse is
made between the so-called “Sabir “and AA/F code –switching or Francarabic,
Taleb Ibrahimi (1981:20) seems to explain the latter confusion, he writes “let those
who speak avoid Francarabic by the progressive introduction of Arabic terms in the
place of Arabised French words”, Lanly (1970 :37) described “Sabir” as a “pidgin
French” “a simplified language of transactions and negotiations ….neither a French
nor an Arabic language”.
Lanly (1970 :38) quotes the French General Faidherbe as saying in 1884 that “in
using this language the French trooper is convinced that he speaks Arabic and the
Arab is convinced that he speaks French”, it is also possible to define “Sabir” as a
kind of French jargon used by Arab North Africans trying to speak French .
49
We know that it is due to historical issues that the Algerian speakers choose to
switch in their speech to the French language, the causes are important topic of
investigations and interpretations, number of answers have been suggested,
including solidarity, accommodation to listeners, choice of topic, and perceived
social and cultural distance. In other words, the motivation of the speaker is an
important consideration in the choice, French is always considered a prestigious
language, and it is common that the first impression we have about people switching
regularly to French, is that they are educated, cultivated and they belong to a higher
social class, as a personal view point Algerian speakers switch to French when they
ignore about the existence of a synonym in AA or even in MSA like the word
“window shopper” which is referred to by the French word “vitrine” or the
borrowed one [vitrina]. Code switching occurs even with the presence of a synonym
which may not cover the exact meaning of what the speaker wants to spot, for
instance, a woman may say [∫rit waħəd la robe ∫abba] (I bought a nice dress) “une
robe” have synonyms in AA: [roba], [3baja] or [gandu:ra] but in here the use of
“une robe” describes the dress’s style the woman wants to speak about, i.e. “une
robe” is a modern one , and “3baya” is reserved for a traditional dress.
According to Bouamrane (1988), Code switching between French and AA is
governed by some rules not in the sense of correctness but possibilities, in other
words, there is a word order to follow for a better and easier utterance, and breaking
the order doesn’t result in a wrong expression but a heavy and strange one to
pronounce, here are some of his proposed rules in AA-French code switching:
The disjunctive pronouns in AA [ana, ntu:ma] must be followed by clitic ones
in French (je, nous) example: [ana je parle souvent m3a wladah] (I always talk to his
sons).
The verb in French after an AA subject must be adapted to AA example:
[ntu:ma présentitu: hier] (you presented yesterday) instead of [ntu:ma présentez
hier].
A French preposition can not govern a main phrase in AA example: [fi la
chambre] (in the room), [avec əsərwal] (with the trousers).
Borrowing has been distinguished from code switching according to the kind of
utterance; Gingras (1974) and Reyes (1974) classify single words as borrowings
while changes of language involving more than single words are classified as code
switching. According to Bouamrane (1988) this view is mistaken for its ignores the
possibility of borrowing proverbs and whole idiomatic phrases, phonological
50
adaptation to the system of the host language helps to distinguish code switching
from borrowing, Bentahila and Davies (1983:302) contend that it will be clear from
a Moroccan bilingual speech that he would be code-switching if he uses the French
word “épicerie” while he would be “borrowing” if he uses the phonologically
adapted word [bisri] ( grocer’s shop), it is the same for the French word “mineur”
and the adapted one in AA [minu:ri] (miner) .
In French AA code switching “phatic expressions”9 occur, some are with a religious
etymology and said always in AA examples:
[lħamdu:llah] “thanks to God”
[bəsməllah] “in the name of God”
[llah yeraħmu:] “god bless his soul”
Others are without a religious etymology but “low on the scale of translatability and
occur in Arabic” Bouamrane’s (1988 ) examples :
[marħba] “welcome”
[tfadal] “after you”
[saħa] “ good health”
There are several linguistic and functional factors implicated in French-AA code
switching, speakers who code switch are competent in the syntactic rules of both
languages, limits and restrictions in code switching indicate that AA and French are
not undergoing a process of pigdinisation, social functions affect code choice,
people have distinct feelings and attitudes towards various codes, some are
prestigious and sound beautiful others are stuffy and less desirable, what ever the
speech community under investigation is, monolingual or multilingual, variation is
the rule, and the linguistic behaviour of bilinguals, namely switching from one
language to another, may be comparable to monolingual’s shift from variety to
variety, or from style to style according to the setting where the speaker finds
himself.
2.6 Diglossia:
One of the most prominent facts about the linguistic situation in Algeria, and all the
Arabic speaking communities, is the existence of two varieties of the same
language, each one used for specific functions with clearly defined roles, one is
9 Expressions used in stereotyped verbal change and function as a mean of establishing or cementing interpersonal
relationships ( Cram , 1981 : 253)
51
considered as prestigious and has a high status “H” and a low one with no official
status. Ferguson (1959: 336) states that diglossia is:
“a relatively stable language situation in which in addition to the
primary dialect of the language, which may include a standard or a
regional standard, here is a very divergent, highly codified, often
grammatically more complex, superposed variety, the vehicle of a large
and respected body of literature, heir of an earlier period or another
speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is
used for most written and formal purposes, but is not used by any sector
of the community for ordinary conversation”.
According to Mouhadjer, the Algerian diglossic situation is very particular; the low
variety is not very close to the high one, illiteracy prevents people from recognizing
many lexical items found in Standard Arabic, and the colonization movement which
left many French words used by many people instead of the local ones are some
causes of the differences between AA and Standard Arabic, for example many
people do not know that the “curtain” in Arabic is called “sita:r”, and rather that
they say [ridu:] (instead of “rideau”) .
In Arabic-speaking communities, the high variety, represented by Cl.Ar is used in
all domains that have something to do with education and written form (a lecture, a
religious preach or TV and radio news), whereas the low variety is the real mother
tongue, the speech of everyday:
“These two varieties, Classical and Colloquial, exist side by side in the Arabic
speech community in a diglossia relationship.” (Ferguson, 1970:359)
However, there is a third intermediary variety that is often termed as a “middle
language” or “a modern standard Arabic that is so widespread in the mass media and
in education” (Ennaji, 1991:9), a variety that seems to be accepted and learned
easily than the “complicated” Classical Arabic.
Apart from this “triangular” linguistic situation, (high, middle and low varieties), a
very important fact to point at is that while standard French, for instance or standard
English as superimposed varieties( have acquired a certain status and prestige, so as
to be used to a great extent in everyday speech, especially by educated people and
higher class speakers), Cl Ar is hardly used as a medium of everyday conversations,
although it is considered as the national and official language ,it is taught in all the
52
educational curricula and used in mass media, it is apparently a stable linguistic
system classical vs. colloquial Arabic.
“diglossia differs from the more widespread standard-with-dialects in that no
segment of the speech community in diglossia regularly uses H as a medium of
ordinary conversation, and any attempt to do so is felt to be[….] pedantic and
artificial.” (Ferguson 1959:245)
The functions calling for MSA are formal and are used for delivering
sermons and formal lectures; it is used in a parliament or legislative body, and for
giving political speeches more explanation or as a sign of sympathy the politicians
may shift to the H variety.
The Algerian dialects are used for functions that are informal such as: giving
instructions to workers in low prestige occupations or to household servants, in
popular programs on the radio and even TV, we may indeed shift into L when a
person lectures in the H variety but answers questions about its contents or explains
parts of it using the L variety so as to ensure understanding.
MSA is not the native language of any Algerian speaker it is learned in a formal
type of education, at school or in mosques…etc. Yet, the term diglossia has been
extended to cover situations where forms of two genetically unrelated or at least
historically distinct languages occupy the H and L positions. The Algerian speakers,
for instance, may use French as H for educational and more prestigious domains and
the Arabic vernacular as L for informal primarily spoken domains, the L and H
varieties are not only different in terms of social features but also in terms of
structural features, Romaine (1994:46): “... not only in grammar, phonology and
vocabulary, but also with respect to a number of social characteristics namely:
function, prestige, literary heritage, acquisition, standardization, and stability.”
Ferguson (1970) describes the low varieties or what he calls “colloquial Arabic”:
“the chain of regional dialects which constitute the Arab’s mother tongue today.”
(p.359) He characterizes the Arabic diglossic situation by the existence of a wide
gap between “H” and “L” varieties, here are some illustrations about differences at
all the linguistic levels Dendane (1993) gave a more detailed illustration :
a/ phonetic:
* Replacement of the Cl.Ar interdentals / ð, θ / by the dentals / d, t/ in many
varieties mainly in urban ones examples: Cl Ar AA
[ðahab] [dhab] (gold)
[θu:m] [tu:m] ( garlic)
53
*Realization of the phoneme /q / either as a voiced velar /g/ in rural dialects, as a
voiceless /q,?, k/ in other varieties example: Cl Ar AA
[qalb] [galb], [?alb], [kalb] ( heart)
b/ phonological :
There are numbers of vowel reduction processes witnessed in Arabic modern
dialects:
* Vowel elision resulting in many consonant clusters with cases of assimilation
example: Cl Ar AA
[rasama] [rsam] “he drew” (past)
[sami3a] [sma3] “he heard”
*Vowel centralization as in [darabat] [darbət] “she hit”
c/ morphological:
*the dropping of the duel verb form suffixes or “bare form” as named by Owens
means that the same way of conjugation is said equally to two or more persons
example:
[iktuba:] [ketbu:] (write!)
d/ lexical :
*transformation: reflects variation in the form, the use, and the meaning (Ferguson,
1959b) as in [m∫a] which means “he went” in AA, the verb [mæ∫a] in Cl.Ar means
“he walked” , and [ðahaba] which means /he went/ does not exist in L variety,
[ðhəb] in some rural dialect as one of the dialects in Béchar means (get out) .
e/ syntactic:
*dropping of case and mood endings (Dendane1993:31) (i3ra:b) for instance
[?i∫tarajtu: kita:ban ʒadidan] “I bought a new book” is said in the L variety [∫rit ktab
ʒdid], we change the mood ending in Cl.Ar if we say for example [hada kitabun
ʒadidun] “this is a new book ”but in AA it stays [hada ktab ʒdid].
The considerable body of literature found in the H variety with its prestige is
another significant aspect concerning the natural superiority of this variety; whereas
the folk literature associated with the L variety will have none of the same prestige.
It may interest folklorists and it may be transmuted into H by writers skilled in H.
One more feature of diglossia is the different patterns of language acquisition with
H and L varieties. The Algerian dialect is acquired by children in a normal
unselfconscious way whereas MSA is learned with formal setting such as in
classrooms or mosques to learn the holy Koran as a part of a religious or cultural
54
instruction, to that extent, the H variety is ‘taught’ whereas the L variety is
‘acquired.’
Not surprisingly H is the standard, written form while L often shows a tendency
to borrow words from H mainly when speakers try to use the L variety in more
formal ways, speeches of the Algerian prime minister Ouyahia are good examples
of this case like in : [sakanat li məddinaha fi iţar əsakan elwaðifi maraha illa dalil
3la naʒah el moxaţaţ] if this expression is said in Cl.Ar it will be [?asakanatu: lati
qadamnaha fi ?itari əsakani əl waðifi mahija illa dalilun 3ala naʒahi el muxatat] and
the result is a certain admixture of L vocabulary into the H. On other occasions,
there may be distinctly different pairs of words, i.e. doublets, in the H and L
varieties to refer to very common objects and concepts. Since the domains of use of
the two varieties do not overlap, there will be an L word for use in typically L
situations and an H word for use in H situations with no possibility of transferring
one to the other. So far as the pronunciation of the two varieties is concerned the L
system will often appear to be the more basic.
In comparison with bilingualism, diglossia is less used in Algeria, most of the
inhabitants are bilinguals and sometimes multilinguals, thus, we frequently switch
between Arabic and French, but rarely switch between MSA and AA, for instance
we may say: [raku:m rajħin par avion] but not [raku:m rajħin bita?ira], in this way
the speaker is not switching in diglossia but in bilingualism.
The degree of diglossia in Algeria depends on the regional dialects, if we look
deeply to this situation we notice that there are many diglossic situations in Algeria
since each region takes diglossia as switching from MSA to its own dialect. People
living in a diglossic speech community do not generally regard diglossia as a
problem, only if there is a growth of literacy or religious indoctrinate which leads to
the use of MSA or mainly Cl.Ar even in daily conversations, for example their kids
say [?omi] for “mom” instead of [maa] or [jemma] and [abi] “dad” instead of [baba]
or [bba], or when there is a desire to decrease regional and/or social barriers, or
when there is a need for a unified national language, diglossia is an extremely stable
phenomenon used to maintain more than one type of language in society, so if the
various colloquial Arabic dialects do not exist, the form of language used in Koran
would be the same one used in every day speech, the language used at schools
would be the same one used for insults, and other daily informal conversations, and
there would be no diglossia. In this way diglossia will be used to preserve the
history and the value of Arabic.
55
The communicative relief which arises from the diglossic situation may
be resolved through the use of relatively un-codified, unstable, intermediate forms
of the language, and frequent vocabulary of borrowing items from high to low
variety.
Ordinary people in Algeria, do not feel that they are in a diglossic community, in a
way that they don’t even know what the word “diglossia” means, but at least they
are aware that they often resort to standard Arabic terms when they have a lack of
vocabulary in the dialect, they also know that the words used for introducing
yourself to a president, are not similar to one used for a chat with friends.
56
2.7 Rural vs urban dialects:
North Africa in general and Algeria in particular, have been arabized in two periods,
the first period started in the sixth and seventh centuries, the varieties which existed
at that time where spoken in old centers and in countryside, these varieties are called
according to Bouamrane (1986) Prehilalian dialects, these dialects are divided into
dialects spoken in villages and countryside and dialects spoken in towns; we may
find the dialects spoken in villages in the Mountains of Msirda and also the region
of Constantine, Mila.
The second period of arabization started with Beni Hilal in the mid eleventh century
and lasted 150 years, these dialects are also classified in two types: Urban and
Bedouin or Rural dialects, the distinction between the two types lies mostly in the
different realizations of a number of phonetic and morphological features, as well as
in the use of different lexical items:
a/ Urban dialects:
In this group, according to Bouamrane(1986), we distinguish Jewish dialects- which
are beyond the task of this study -and Muslim dialects, we find them in Tlemcan,
Dellys, Algiers, Media, Blida, Constantine, Skikda and other towns, Urban dialects
possess particular characteristics here are some :
* the Arabic sound /ʒ/ (ج) is replaced by /dʒ/ example :
[dʒamila dʒəbti dʒəlaba?] (Djamila did you brought the gown?)
* the Arabic sound /q/ (ق) is pronounced in /k/ or glottal/?/ or kept as it is for
example : [qalbi] (my heart) is said [?albi] in Tlemcan .
[kalbi] in Djidjel .
[qalbi] in Algiers and Blida .
*The /h/ (ه) sound is often weak like [nta3hu:m] “theirs”, [darha]”her home”
* Feminine and masculine forms are not always distinguished; they are referred
to the same way and sometimes reversed, example:
[Amina ftaħ el bab] (Amina open the door), instead of [fetħi] which is normally for
females, [ftaħ] is said to males, for whom you may say [ftaħ] like in the dialect of
Tlemcan or [fətħi] in the dialect of Annaba
* The adoption of a diminutive form when talking about smaller things example:
[krisi] instead of [kursi] (chair)
[wli:d] instead of [wəld] (a boy)
57
In addition to these general features there are many lexical items typical to the
Urban dialects for instance: [kæməl] (all) which is replaced by [ga3] in Bedouin
dialects and [rdʒəl]
(foot) vs.[kra3].
b/Bedouin dialects:
These dialects form a mass and are used in many regions of Algeria mainly in the
Sahara and the villages or small towns like Naama, Bayadh, Tiaret, Béchar, Djelfa
and in the West of Oran, these dialects have also common characteristics like:
*the Diphthongization: or the pronunciation of diphthong instead of long vowels,
most of the times the sound /aj/ replaces the /i: / example:
[nsi:t] ( I forgot) is said [nsajt].
[3ţithu:m liha] (I gave them to her) is pronounced [3ţajthu: lajha].
*The Fricatives / θ / (ث) and / ð / (ذ) are kept in most of the Bedouin dialects
whereas, they become dental in urban dialects: /t/ (ت) and /d/ (د) example:
[ðhab γali θəmak] (Gold is expensive there) which is pronounced in Urban
dialects [dhab γali təmak].
This general view on the complexity and diversity of the different kinds of
dialects in Algeria will help me to introduce and determine the nature of the spoken
dialects in Béchar, which is the aim of this study.
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2.8 Conclusion
The most significant feature that typifies the linguistic situation of Algeria is the
existence of three languages, Arabic, French, and Berber, classifying Algeria among
the multilingual countries. These languages are not used arbitrarily in society, but
they are given different political, social, and educational positions and status, thus
new linguistic and sociolinguistic phenomena, such as diglossia and code switching,
emerged in the scene as a result of the long term contact between the co-existing
languages.
Any country in the world has a language that differentiates it from the other
countries and takes it as a base form for its communication, Algeria’s first language
is Arabic, in its two forms (standard and colloquial) presents the most important
share in the linguistic scene. Arabization and after few years of application, brings
Cl.Ar to use, and different Arabic dialects existing presents a sort of Arabic varieties
used mainly in the whole country for daily communication, Berber varieties exist in
many regions of the country in the north, and the south, Béchar also includes some
Berber varieties.
59
Chapter three:
Sociolinguistic Situation in
Bechar
60
3.1. Introduction
Any description of a certain dialect must be initiated by the description of the area
that uses that dialect, defining the origins of the tribes is also necessary to provide
the reader with some arguments about the inclusion of terms or expressions from
MSA or Moroccan dialects. For instance; Béchar’s speech community shares the
same verbal repertoire apart from some Berber old speakers, who may be presented
as a minority group living in Béchar with a very limited intelligibility, the present
dialects are varieties of AA , and a Berber variety from Igli , the existence of the
present dialects in this research and more varieties beyond the analysis like the
“Jewish Ksourian” variety and other Berber varieties make the sociolinguistic
situation in Béchar very complex, the lack of documentation about the dialects of
the region presented also a difficulty, in fact no further studies were made about
dialects of Béchar, BELOUFA(1989) presented some observations about the
sociolinguistic situation in Béchar , this research will introduce many characteristics
and features about the existing dialect and give a clear image about the actual
sociolinguistic situation in Béchar.
3.1.1. General background of Béchar
Béchar is a town in the south of Algeria; it is situated in the south west bordered by
other Saharan towns such as: Naama and El Bayedh in the north, Morocco in the
west, Adrar in the east, which extends until the south with Tinduf. Béchar had
witnessed many historical events, the most important one happened in December
1852 when Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah, from Ouled Sid Cheikh, pushed all the
population to revolt against the French. In January 1855, Captain Colomb,
commander chief of El Bayed, declared a battle against Doui Mni3 and Ouled
Jerir10. In March 1855, the same officer attacked those tribes, and then in April
1900, a military expedition led by Colomb reached Taghit where the French
founded a military base. In 1903, the region took the name of Colomb- Béchar of
the French captain.
10 Doui Mni3 and Ouled jrir are the two most important groups in Béchar.
61
Map (1): Administral division of Béchar.
3.1.2. Origins of the tribes
To present the origin of each tribe we trusted books and reports written by the first
French officers sent to Béchar, to avoid glorious stories told by any member of the
concerned tribes. According to general Colomb, the Doui Mni3 formed a
confederation; most of the books said that the Doui Mni3 were nomads coming
originally from Arab tribes.
Some historians said they came to Béchar through Morocco with the help of El
Chorfas Hassania to serve and protect them; others said that they came directly to
settle in the boundaries of Béchar exactly in “Oued Guir”, but what all the sources
agreed with was that they came exactly from “Yemen”, what is clear also is that
their contact with the Moroccans was limited because there are no similarities
neither in their speech nor in their traditions.
When the Doui Mni3 came to” Oued Guir”, they met “Ouled Jrir “: a sub-tribe of
Hmiane11, and after a battle between the two tribes, the Doui Mni3 took the valley of
“Oued Guir”. The Ouled Jrir, to comeback to their valley, forgot about their origins
and accepted to live under the control of the Doui Mni3, it was like an alliance, that
is why in many books it is mentioned that Ouled Jrir and Doui Mnii formed one
tribe in the past; here again the two tribes must have been in a long term contact
because their dialects are approximately the same; after years the co-existence of the
11 A very powerful tribe in the north of Béchar whose members are numerous, powerful, and rich
62
two tribes in the same region, caused a problem, and because the Doui Mni3
represented a dominant majority, the Ouled Jrir moved to Bni Wenif , Zouzfana and
Ben Zirreg.
The “Ksouria” or “Ksorians” refers to people living in the Ksar of Kenadsa12 and of
Béchar or “Takda”. The Ksouria are of different origins like Ouled Sidi Mhammed
,Ouled Dekhissa and even Jewish families, this tribe did not take part in wars and
conflicts .Kenadsa was the centre of commandment of Béchar lead by the Mourabtin
of Morocco. Sidi Mohammed Ben Bouziane came to Kenadsa and founded the
Zaouia Ziania and became the spiritual leader of all the region, he brought many
Imams to teach Ksouria about Arabic, Islam and history, and Ksouria , in spite of
their different origins, formed one cultivated and civilized speech community. The
impact of the Moroccans is clear in the speech of the Kousria which is very close to
Moroccan dialects, Ksouria use some terms and expressions, especially songs which
result from the contact with some Jewish families who lived in Kenadsa.
The inhabitants of Igli who represent the Shlouh in this research, were and are still
referred to as “Glaoua” according to their region’s name. The general truth of the
North African Berbers is that they were divided into three groups: Kotama in the
north, Senhaja in the middle, and Zenata in the Sahara. Igli belongs to Zenata and in
ancient times it witnessed the existence of four important Berber tribes which were:
“Ait Khebash” which was the biggest and the strongest, “Ait Atta”, “Beni Guil”, and
“Ait Alwan” who are considered as the first group that dropped anchor in the area.
Most of these people were pirates, they consumed Igli’s strategic situation as the
link between the northern and southern towns and built a bridge between two high
mountains so as to allow people pass but after paying a tax. Then in 1730 Sidi
Mohamed Ben Othman, a religious man originating from Touat13, came to the area
and settled in the highest mountain which is “Aghrem Amoqran” while the others
lived in El Ksar.
3.2. The existing dialects in Béchar
12 A small town situated at 20 km in the south west of Béchar famous for its artists and writers, like Alla ,Yasmina
Khadra and Malika Moukadem, and its Zaouia Ziania. 13A region that belongs to Adrar, and Ouled Ben Othman who were in Igli are from the same family of Oulad Ben
Othman who are in Zauoia Tehtania in Adrar, 40km north of Ouad Zouzfana. They did not have a Zaouia in Igli and
their influence remained around Touat.
63
The sociolinguistic situation in Béchar, is said to be complex because of the
multiplicity and the diversity of the dialects. There are at least six dialects spoken in
Béchar. We will introduce in this work five of them: four are Arabic: the dialect
used by the majority, the dialect of the Doui Mni3, the dialect of Ouled jrir, and the
one of the Ksouria and a Berber variety called “Shelha”.
3.2.1. The dialect of the majority
This dialect has many similar features to the one spoken in the south of Morocco, it
is used now by most of the second and third generations except for the Doui Mni3,
and it presents a good example of elaborated code. If we compare this dialect to
other spoken ones we can easily see that its syntax is simplified and its phonological
system has less phonemes.
Examples:
[amakangəd∫ ndi:rha waħdi] (I can not do it alone).
[akikadiru: txorju: mən təmmæk] (how can you get out from that place)
[amakanəbγih∫ ga3 ana] (I don’t like him at all).
[ama∫i hakak] (not like that )
[awi:n kayəskən hadak ssijəd] (where does that person live )
[a3andak t3awəd had əddarba] (I am warning you to never do it again)
[ama3andah ga3 3lah jlu:mna] (he does not have the right to blame us)
The addition of the prefix{a-}at the beginning of each expression is perhaps the
most important feature of this dialect, the function of this prefix is not clear because
it is added to expressions, in the beginning of only the first word.
The pre-verb {ka-} at the beginning of the verbs is the mark of the present tenses; it
is a common feature between this dialect and Moroccan ones, for example:
[kanəbki] (I cry) (I am crying)
[kanəʒri] (I run) (I am running)
[kanətfarəʒ] (I watch) (I am watching)
The dialect of the majority (D1) is a sibilant-merging dialect; the /z/ sound is
replaced by /ʒ/ in most of the words like in: [mʒəwaʒ] instead of [mzawaʒ]
(married) and [ʒu:ʒ] instead of [zu:ʒ] (two), and [ʒaʒ] for [zaʒ] (glass).
64
Code switching takes place in this dialect, but what is a grammatical error in
French especially by the young persons, is to consider the definite article “la” in
any feminine word in French as “l’” or “ l apostrophe”, and so they omit the “l” and
keep the /a/ at the beginning of words, for example:
French D1
la robe (dress) [arob]
la tarte [aţarţ]
la piscine [apisi:n]
This dialect is an elaborated code, it has a simpler phonological system than the
dialect of the Doui Mnii (D2) and the dialect of the Ouled Jrir (D3), in fact this
dialect doesn’t include some purely Arabic sounds which exist in D2 like /ð/, /ð/ and
/θ/, and it replaces the long /e: / which characterizes D3 by the /u:/, examples:
D2 D1 D3 D1
[ðəlma] [dəlma] (darkness) [ʒarhe:] [jarhu:] (their
neighbours)
[θawm] [tu:m] (garlic) [ləm∫e:∫] [ləm∫u:∫] (cats)
There are many lexical terms and expressions that leak from Morocco and exactly
from Figig to Béchar, and vice versa, like the word [msantaħ] or [msaţi] for mad and
the expression [jak labas] for (what is wrong?), and maledictions like [awili:],
[anari:]; other expressions are typically from D1 like [iwahah] and [a3a:rrəbi] for
(really!) and [hara] (give me).
This dialect is some how typical for its incursion of a large number of slang
vocabularies, such as: [xwi] meaning “go”, which can be also expressed as [k∫i], or
[kru:∫], [xbaiţa] is another term which refers to a bombed man, [baz] and [∫əf∫i] are
used to describe a weak person, or more precisely to hesitate on him, and [mdarrak]
for a brawny man.
3.2.2. The Dialect of the DouiMni3
The DouiMni3 is a tribe whose members present an example of solidarity, the way
Doui Mni3 settled in Béchar is still debatable, however what we are sure about is
65
that they are of pure Arab origins exactly from the tribe of Bani Hilal14 in the
Yemen. If any one who knows about the dialect of Doui Mni3 is watching a film or
documentary about the Arab Bedouin life in the golf or in the Yemen, he will notice
great similarities in the accent and in many expressions and words, some of them are
exactly the same. According to Beloufa.L (1986) the percentage of cognition
between this dialect and MSA is about 80% for instance we find some words like:
[ta3ala] is [t3ala] (come), [ana la aţiqo an ataħarak] is [mani∫ tajəg nətħarak] (I can
not move at all), /jataħadaθ/ is /jətħadaθ/ (speak)…etc, and this confirms the Arab
origin of the DouiMni3.
This dialect is used by all the members of Doui Mni3, for them it’s a question of
solidarity and ethnicity. Most of the Doui Mni3, nowadays live in Abadla, and it is
there where we can hear their pure dialect, even if this dialect did not change a lot,
here are some examples : [ja wil mattek] (pay attention)
[hajəd 3ani] (get away from me)
[sir 3ani ħsan lak] (you’d better let me alone)
[3ţajni ∫it∫u:f dik lxan∫a] (give me that case)
[xli xajmtək] (malediction will be on you)
[γa t3ala t∫u:f] (please come to see).
[wa∫ta θə su:lima dajrinha lajna hna ha wajn] (what is this scandal
happening here).
Like most Algerian dialects, the DouiMni3 don’t have names for new objects,
they rarely borrow words from French; in fact this dialect is remarkable by the
creation of new names for new objects, these names can be derived from the sound
made by the object, or its function, for instance, the DouiMni3 gave (bra) the name
[xabaja] from the verb [jxabbi] or (to hide), and for (ice cream) it is [mliħsa] from
the verb [jəlħas] (to lick).
This dialect is also characterized by the use of proverbs in each corresponding
situation; there is at least one proverb for each situation, when having a discussion
with someone from the DouiMni3 you will hear at least one proverb. Most proverbs
have a relation with Bedouin environment, including names of very old objects and
some abandoned names for objects or animals like [γrara] which means an object
made of leather and serves as water reservoir, and [lbaw] or a small camel.
14 a confederation of Arabian Bedouin tribes that migrated into North Africa in the 11th century their influx was major
factor in the Arabization of the Maghreb
66
Here are some proverbs: [γa li ʒa mən dahra wəld 3amək a Zohra], (any one who
comes will be your cousin). It is said to a person who is pretending any one to be
one member of his family.
[m∫aw 3ajnijja ħarak ja ħwaʒbi], (I have lost my eyes so what about my eyebrows).
[limaħawel 3la wəl ləγrara ma jħawəl 3la 3gabha] (Who does not take from the
beginning will not take by the end).
[li ma ðag əlħam t3aʒbu: rrija] (Who had never tasted meat likes liver) this proverb
is said to the person convinced that what he owns is the best, even if he doesn’t have
any idea about other things.
[lkər∫ γrara wərbatha 3kal], it means that eating without control is the cause of all
health problems.
This dialect is characterized by the use of {γa} instead of {γir} which means “just”,
example: [γa ∫wi], ( just a few ) or, [rahʒab γa lbaţaţa] ( he brought just some
potatoes ).
By analyzing these examples we can see that DouiMni3’s dialect is typically
Bedouin, the fricatives {θ} (ث) and {ð} (ذ) are present, this pronunciation is one
characteristic of the resemblance between this dialect and CA; examples:
CA D2
[θu:m] (garlic) [θawm]
[ðahab] (gold) [ðhab]
[ðala:m] (darkness) [ðlam]
Another feature which classifies D2 as a Bedouin dialect is the pronunciation of
diphthongs in place of long vowels, for instance “hand” is pronounced in urban
dialect [li:d] but in D2 it is [laid], and “good” is pronounced [zain] instead of
[zi:n].
Some cases of deletion appear in words that are borrowed from Arabic example:
CA D2
[basal] [bsal] (onion)
[ħa∫i∫] [ħ∫i∫] (herb)
[kaθir] [kθir] (a lot)
Some expressions in D2 are not just different from CA but seem to the hearer
“bizarre” .These words are mainly the ones used in asking questions in addition to
some adverbs of place here are some examples:
[nahu:] who?
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[kif] how?
[wajwak] when?
[hnahawajn] here
[lhajh] there
These words, even if give us an impression that have totally dissimilar origins from
the other common words between all Algerian dialects, have a relation in a way or
another with the equivalent ones in AA, for instance [wajwak] is a combination of
two variables of “when” in AA: [wajnta] or [wi:nta] and [wəkta∫], and [hnahawajn]
a derivation from the word [hnaja].
In terms of lexis and in most cases the feminine terms are derived from the
masculine ones by adding the suffix {a}. Example:
M F
[mrið] sick [mriða]
[kbir] big [kbira]
[zain] nice [zaina]
In indicating possession and as a shared characteristic with the majority of the
Algerian dialects, we add the suffix {-i:}for the masculine and {-ti:} for feminine,
the following illustration may clarify the task:
[xa:li] my uncle [xa:lti] my aunt
[sahbi] my boy friend [sahabti] my girl
friend
[ʒari] my neighbour (masc.) [ʒarti] neighbour (fem)
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3.2.3. The Dialect of the Ksouria
We must first clarify that the Ksouria are not people who live in Ksours of the South
where the spoken dialect is “Shelha”, but people who live mainly in the Ksar of
Kenadsa and the Ksar of the center of Béchar or “Takda”.
Ksouria come originally from Morocco and from “Hmian”, but were settled since at
least four generations in Kenadsa. Ksouria were all educated and civilized, they
were “Toulba” and “Mrabtin” the first comers to Kenadsa, brought with them their
“Abid” or Black people to serve them and help them in their works. They shared
with the “Abid” many habits and traditions and even dialects. No previous studies
were made about this dialect; informants and many family members facilitate the
analysis of this dialect and provide us with the data needed.
This dialect is the nearest one to Moroccan ones from all the Algerian dialects, and
here are some examples:
[a zidu:hu: xəbza xra] (give them some bread)
[a∫ had el 3i∫! bəlli 3lijja məblu:l]( what is this couscous like! I think it is wet)
[iwa bγiti ləvnivina, hada ləbxas xlas] (you are mad to ask for no viable things)
[dəxlətli 3i:∫a fi 3ini] (a have a crumb in my eye)
[makajħə∫mu: makajxazu: l mi:da mkaħla mrəgda] (what’s a shame the table was
dirty )
[makat3arfu:∫i ləswab] ( you don’t know how to deal with people)
[ku:s el bu:ss γi bida] ( I swear she has a white skin)
However some words exist only in Morocco and in Kenadsa, these words
were brought with the first comers to Kenadsa, and are still used by the Ksouria here
are some examples: [xizzu:] “carrot”, [γtar] for “slate” [mati∫a] for “tomato” and
especially the word [waxa] which means “yes” or “ok”. Examples:
[ləmrozia] (Carrot)
[zu:nan] (Crumbs of glass)
[mozon] (Lentil)
[qedu:h] (Marmite)
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D3 has no names for new objects, unlike Doui Mni3, the Ksouria give borrowed
names to new objects. In fact there are a lot of French borrowings in Ksouria
dialects because they were in a permanent contact with French people who lived
there during and after colonization.
Most of the French who lived in Kenadsa worked in education and teaching they
went to cinema, swimming pool and libraries, their objects and activities were taken
and imitated by the Ksouria and the names of these objects and activities were
borrowed. Examples:
D3 French
[su:nit] (Sonnette)
[safajas] (Surveillance)
[lbartmu:n] (Porte monnaie)
[lkantina] (La cantine)
[minu:ri] (Mineur)
These words are still used and pronounced this way even by educated people.
D3 is classified as an urban dialect, phonologically speaking the fricative /θ/ (ث) and
/ð/ (ذ) are replaced by the dental /t/ (ت) and /d/ (د). Example [tqil] is said for heavy
instead of [θqil] and [dhab] for gold instead of [ðhab], some Arabic sounds are not
found in D3 at all like /ð/ for instance Ksouria don’t say [ðalma] (darkness) but
[dalma].
Unlike all dialects in Béchar where the sound /q/ is replaced by /g/, D3 in some
words keeps the sound /q/ like in CA, example: [qalbi] instead of [galbi] for (my
heart) and [qrib] instead of [grib] for (near).
Another feature is the use of diminutive forms like [stijəl] a small [stal] (can) and
[mtiwi] a small [mətwi] (knife). Ksouria‘s dialect is also famous for the use of the
/e:/ instead of /u:/ Example: [ʒəbna lhe:t nməlhe:h wə nakle:h] (we brought fish we
will put in some salt and eat it ) which is pronounced in all the other dialects [ʒəbna
lhu:t nməlhu:h wə naklu:h].
Proverbs also exist in D3, most of these proverbs have a relation with religion and
education which are very important for the Ksouria; examples:
[tiba∫ire: la tinaffire:] from the original Arabic proverb [ba∫iru: la tonaffiru:], it is
said to a person who never gives hope to people.
[jakəlha lmsali wəla tarək ssla] (is it for the one who prays or for who doesn’t) and it
is said for those who cook a small quantity of food for many people.
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[zriba tedi laxra] it is said for consolation.
[dkarna lma ou ləhlib wə sidna Mohamed əl ħbib] it is said to a person who is
always complaining about pain and illness.
[3bid si:dna dkərna gədamhu: γi ssla wə sjəm] it is said for gossip, in front of whom
we have to pay attention when speaking.
Like D2, Ksoria’s dialect has a proverb for every situation sometimes many
just for one situation, for instance to say that you humiliate someone you can use
one of these proverbs: [wadditu: fi kas], [γsəltu: γsil əl kər∫a], [xda ma xda ətbal
nhar əl 3id].
In D3 possessive pronouns have /nta3et/ as a root, which is /nta3/ in other dialects;
here is the list of possessive pronouns: [nta3ti] mine
[nta3tək] your
[nta3tu:] his
[nta3ətha] her
[nta3ətku:] yours
[nta3əthu:] their
The feminine of nouns in D3 is formed by adjoining the suffix /a/ to the masculine,
and like all the dialect in Béchar D3 doesn’t include the duel form neither in
pronouns nor in nouns. The external plural requires adding the suffix {i:n} for the
masculine and {a:t} for the feminine, examples:
S (M) S(F) Pl (M) Pl(F)
[mrabəţ] [mrabţa] [mrabţin] [mrabţa:t] (Marabou or Almoravid)
[xayaţ] [xayaţa] [xajaţi:n] [xajaţa:t] (dressmaker)
The case of “broken plural” occurs only in the masculine, the plural in here needs a
change in the vowel of the root, example:
S Pl
[∫rif ] [∫orfa] (sacred)
[kbir] [kbar] (big)
[ʒdid] [ʒdad] (new)
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3.2.4. Dialect of the Ouled Jrir
The dialect used by Ouled Jrir is similar, or even identical to the one of the Doui
Mni3, it is said that both groups formed one tribe in the past, and because of many
reasons, mainly wars, they were separated. In some historical books the Doui Mni3
and the Ouled Jrir were different tribes but they formed an alliance for a long time,
however, there is a slight difference in pronunciation and in the names of some
words. Examples: [lgarg] (shoes), [zəgdu:] (a lot of), [lhatf] (hill), [lu:h]
(throw)…etc. Ouled Jrir live in the center of Béchar not outside of it; they usually
form small groups in dispersed places. These groups are shifting to the dialect of the
majority.
3.2.5. Shelha
There are many types of Berber languages spoken in Béchar along the different
regions, but these varieties have almost the same Berber speech pattern, including
lexis and phonology, and carry only few differences, they also share many
characteristics with Tamazight, Chaouia, and Tamachek except the one of Tabelbala
which consists of a particular vocabulary and a different phonological system from
the other varieties in Béchar and Kabylia. It can be intelligible just by some tribes in
Mali and Niger because they have the same rules of speech15, we are not going to
present all these varieties, but only one of them which is the one used in Igli,
because it is mutually intelligible between all the Berber speakers in Béchar and Igli
is the only region where you can find many people using “Shelha”.
Shelha is a very old variety, and it was among the Berber languages spoken in
North Africa. Nowadays “Shelha” is found in some areas in the region of Béchar,
more exactly in Beni-ounif, Igli, Wakda, Taghit, Lahmar, Boukais and Tabelbala, it
also extends to Figig, a small region in Morocco, and to other places in the South of
the kingdom due to country borders. Shelha is spoken by elders more than the
youngsters who acquire other languages of their generation; all the examples below
are from the ”Shelha” of Igli, or the native speakers call “Tabeldit”.
According to Mohanhd Akli. H (2000), in spite of the geographical distribution of
the Berber languages, they still have many lexical terms in common.
15 Mouili (2011)
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Examples: (Tz: Tamazight, Ch: Chawia, T:Tabeldit, Sh: Shelha)
“father” is [baba] (Tz, Ch), [abba] (T), and [ba:] (Sh).
“mother” is: [jəmma] (Tz, Ch), [ma] (T).
“sister” is: [ultma] (T), [weltma] (Tz), [istma] (Sh).
“eye” is: [tit] (for all the Berber languages)
“day” is: [wa:s] (Tz, Ch), [a:s] (Sh).
Shelha has names for all the local objects mainly the old ones, but it doesn’t
have names for new objects like pocket, window, radio, TV, cinema, villa …etc.
Thus the new generations intended to borrow names for these things from Arabic or
French with a slight difference in the pronunciation or a change in one or two
elements. Nevertheless, this variety still has many lexical characteristics that are
original and others are created because of the influence of other languages mainly
Arabic and French.
Some terms are abandoned or even forgotten and others are replaced by words from
Arabic, most of the lost words are related to agriculture because it was the most
important activity in the past, nowadays, people are interested in education, culture
and other activities, just old persons work in agriculture. Those words are lost
mainly among the new generations more over most of them do not have their
synonyms neither in Arabic nor in other languages because they are specific to the
Ksours of Béchar, example:
*[tagəja:rt] is a piece of wood put around the well used to prevent the sand from
going inside.
*[agmu:n] refers to the earth which is used and available for agriculture.
*[a:ʒdəl] is a place in the earth where water is poured.
Berber varieties have many similarities with each other at all levels, in terms of lexis
Shelha shares many words with Tamazight, example:
Tamazight Shelha
[aman] [aman] (water)
[tu:dərt] [tu:dərt] (life)
[i:γzər] [i:γzər] (river)
[qijəm] [qijəm] (sit)
There are also many lexical differences between the two, example:
[adrar] [tawri:rt] (mountain)
[wu:l] [u:l] (heart)
[axxam] [ti:dart] (house)
[anzad] [ixəf] (hair)
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The Ksours of Béchar witnessed the occupation of the French in 1900, but the
influence of French vocabulary on Shelha did not reach its utmost. However, apart
from switching into it, there are some French words which have been integrated in
Shelha like the word [bu:rdi:n], “le bord de la dune” which has swept into this
variety during the French colonization to refer to a place in front of the dunes where
old people gather.
Shelha’s speech is not randomly structured, in spite of its lack of a written form, it
has grammatical rules through which speech patterns are organized, and correct
forms are distinguished from the said “incorrect” ones thanks to these rules, and
here are examples of syntactic categories:
Shelha unlike Classical Arabic and MSA does not include the dual of both
masculine and feminine among its pronouns The feminine pronouns are derived
from the masculine ones by adding a {t} example : [nətta]: he
[nəttat] : she
[∫ku:m]: you Pl M [∫ku:mt]: you Pl F
Shelha has two types of number, singular and plural, but only the latter is marked.
The plural has two forms according to the type of nouns, the first regular type is
known as the "external plural" it consists of a change in the initial vowel of the noun
a, u, i into i, and adding a suffix –n for the masculine.
Example: [argaz] → [irgazən] “man” [u:t∫u:] → [it∫u:wan] “ horn”
The feminine plural requires the omission of the suffix /t/ and its replacement by the
suffix {i:n}, and sometimes a is omitted and replaced by i or u. Example:
[tamətu:t] [timətu:ti:n] [tajta:lət] [tajta:li:n]
The second form of the plural is known as the “broken plural”; in here the plural
form is made by a change in the vowels. Example:
[saku:] [isoka] “bed” [ta∫ka:rt] [ti∫u:kar] “case”
But sometimes the word is totally changed. Example:
[a3yal] [alwa∫u:n] [axdu:∫] [taʒtalət] (child)
The adjectives, on the other hand, are derived from the nouns and can be either
masculine or feminine; the masculine is initiated by a vowel, while the feminine is
initiated by the /t/ consonant examples: [tizəgərt] [azəga:r] [tazəga:rt]
“tall”
[tikələt] [akəlu:] [takəlu:t] “short”
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Shelha in general is a subject verb object language, the VSO order acts as an
answer of a question like in (2), and sometimes two verbs can be found in one
sentence (see c).
1- a3ʒal iswu: aman. The boy drank water.
2- a) mani gəlaw a3jal? Where did the boy go?
b) iza adi γər.(see deletion) Went to study.
3- atzi:3 adəgma3 aman. I go to bring water.
Unlike Tamazight which is used in Kabylia, any of the Berber varieties in Béchar
has an official status, their status remains social. Some varieties like “Tabeldit” are
used just by old people but, with the presence of those speakers we can at least
collect data about the dialect. Other varieties start to disappear and giving features
about, is something very difficult especially with the absence of a written heritage.
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3.3. Lexical comparison and cognition with MSA and D1
According to Beloufa.L (1989) it seems complicated to determine the degree of
lexical relationship between Classical Arabic and any dialectal Arabic because of
the difficulty to select the shared lexical items and to identify their meanings. So in
order to give a general view of this dichotomy it may be better to use the Swadesh
list, which is an organized way to present such a list of words, it includes more than
100 stable terms for each dialect, and a synonym in CA for every term.
This comparison follows the following order: the terms will be written in English at
first, then in CA or MSA, and then the other dialects represented as:
-D1: the dialect spoken by the majority,
-D2: the dialect spoken by the Doui Mni3,
-D3: the one used by the Ksouria,
-D4: used by the Oulad Jrir, and
-D5: refers to Shelha.
Apart from the Swadesh list we can generally say that the dialects of Béchar are
related to Classical Arabic or later MSA for many reasons. The most important one
is that Algeria is a speech community in which diglossia is societal. In particular, the
dialects of Béchar are considered as low and MSA is high, the dialect which is
closely related to MSA is the one spoken by the Doui Mni3. For example: (go away
from me) [ibta3id 3ani] in MSA is [hajəd 3anni] in this dialect, also [ta3ala] is
[t3ala] (come), [ana la atiqo an ataħarak] is [mani∫ tajħəg nətħarrak] (I can not move
at all), [jataħaddaθ] is [jətħaddaθ] (he speaks)…etc. This means that this type of
dialect consists of a considerable number of MSA items more than the others but
with a slight difference in pronunciation.
In terms of phonology, together with the other southern regions, Béchar is famous
with its use of the phoneme /g/ rather than /q/ in most of the words like: [gri:b]
(near, closer), [g3od] (sit), [gu:l] (say), [lgi:t] (find), [gamra] (moon), [tleg] (let).
But some times /q/ remains as it is in the dialect of Ksouria and in some words like:
[qra] (read or learn), [qor?an] (Quran), [mqadəm] (advanced), [qəlb] (heart), and
sometimes it is replaced by /k/ as in [ktəl] (he killed). The phenomenon of
metathesis, on the other hand, is very common in this speech, it appears in the
inversion of /s/and /∫/ as in [səm∫] rather than [∫əms] (sun), or /r/ and /l/ like in [rol]
instead of [lor] (behind) in Doui mni3’s dialect [m3a] (with) is pronounced [3ma].
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These are only few features that characterize the dialects of Béchar. The grammar
associated in it is similar to most of the Algerian dialects, and from all the analyzed
dialects the one which can be mutually intelligible with all the Algerian dialects
including the northern, the southern, and perhaps the eastern dialects is the one
spoken by the majority. The other southern dialects remain far from being clearly
understood by the others mainly the dialects of Adrar and Tinduf.
3.3.1. Cognition with MSA
After comparing the lexical items of the dialects of Béchar using the Swadesh list,
we move to present the percentage of cognation between these dialects and MSA.
Now we try to make the correlation between them one by one starting by:
a) MSA and D1
According to Beloufa (1989), the percentage of cognation between MSA and D1 is
around 62%. Some of the words in this dialect are identical to MSA others are not
but their origins go back to it. The roots are the same but the difference lays in
morphology through adding or omitting one morpheme or more. Examples:
/MSA/ /D1/
[rafi:q] [rfi:g] (companion).
[ahmar] [hmar] (red).
[josra] [ləsra] (left).
[qari:b] [gri:b] (near).
[ba3i:d] [b3i:d] (far).
On the other hand, there are many words which are not related to MSA such as:
[wasix] [mja3fən] (dirty).
[majnu:n] [hbi:l] (crazy)
[γanam] [∫jah] (cheeps).
b) MSA and D2
The percentage here is 79%, however there are many similarities between the
two, as said before, and most of the difference is at the level of morphology.
Examples: /MSA/ /D2/
[jabis] [yabəs] (dry).
[bayð] [bayð] (egg).
[ku:l] [ku:l] (all).
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[kaθi:r] [kθi:r] (many).
[tifl] [tfəl] (baby).
Sometimes the difference lays in lexis, for instance:
[sami3a] [tsənat] (listen).
[ðaraba] [zda] (hit).
[∫araba] [skaħ] (drink).
[hajawan] [zajla] (animal).
[irja3] [3gob] (go back).
c) MSA and D3
The percentage of cognition is 73%, in here also there are many similarities, and
some words are the same like in Arabic even if not borrowings
/MSA/ /D3/
[ fi] [fi] (in)
[yəl3ab] [yəl3ab] (play)
[3a∫] [3a∫] (live)
[warda] [warda] (flower)
[ri∫a] [ri∫a] (feather)
Some words have a slight difference which can sometimes be a vowel or a syllable
like in the following examples:
/MSA/ /D3/
[ xa:fa] [xa:f] (fear)
[ a3ţa] [3ţa] (give)
[ ha∫i:∫] [h∫i:∫] (grass)
[hu:na] [hna] ( here)
[qalb] [qəlb] (heart)
On the other hand there are some words which are totally different from Arabic,
especially the ones originating from Moroccan dialects:
/MSA/ /D3/
[saqata] [təslat] (fall)
[saħn] [γtar] (slate)
[sikin] [mtiwi] (knife)
[nafida] [sarʒəm] (window)
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In this dialect some words are the same like in Arabic but their meaning is different
like in /ma3sour/ which is an MSA word meaning (pressed) but in D3 it means “
slim”; /l3afia/ also means in MSA /health/ but it refers to (fire ) in D3.
d) MSA and D4
MSA and the dialect of Ouled jrir are related to each other at about 67%, and like
the previous dialect there are lexical similarities as well differences between the
two. Examples of their similarities are:
/MSA/ /D4/
[yamu:t] [ymu:t] (die).
[yaxaf] [yxaf] (fear).
[warda] [warda] (flower).
[ða3if] [ð3if] (week).
[sami3a] [sma3] (hear).
Of course there is a slight difference in phonology, but this does not really create a
concrete distinction more than it is in lexis as in:
[saqata] [tərdax] (fall).
[jati:r] [jfər] (fly).
[ata] [xlaţ] (came).
[kaθi:r] [zəgdu:] ( a lot)
Variation between dialect three and MSA is more than the variation between dialect
two and MSA, after the separation of the Ouled jrir and Doui Mni3 the former chose
to constitute their own variety
e) MSA and D5
Although both of these languages are originally distinct from each other but they
may correlate at about 23%. These examples show exactly the difference:
/MSA/ /D5/
[kull] [ga3] (all).
[aswad] [abərkan] (black).
[ba3d] [afu:h] (some).
[najm] [itri] (star).
[dahr] [tadwat] (back).
Nevertheless there are similarities between the two as in:
[hukuma] [hukmet] (government).
[maslaha] [salhat] (interest).
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[ramd] [rmad] (ashes).
[zoqaq] [sqaq] (road).
[tajr] [ti:r] (bird).
3.3.2. Comparison and Cognition with D1
Dialect one in general may act as the amalgamation of the various varieties because
of the diversity of the origins of people who live in Béchar, it is spoken by the great
majority including: Doui Mni3, Ouled jrir, Ksouria, Chraga16, and the new comers
who are people from all the Algerian regions.
f) Dialect One and Dialect Two
Cognation here is 73%, and examples of their differences are:
/D1/ /D2/
[3and] [hda] (at).
[jsoţ] [jhab] (blow).
[3gəd] [krəf] (tie).
[dabəz] [t3arək] (fight).
[baz] [tful] (kid).
While for the similarities we may find words having the same root with a difference
in pronunciation, most of these words are similar to MSA examples:
/D1/ /D2/
[dhar] [ðhar] (back).
[kbi:r] [kbi:r] (big).
[dəm] [dəm] (blood).
[hfar] [hfar] (dig).
g) Dialect One and Dialect Three
Cognition between these two dialects is about 79 % here, are some examples
/D1/ /D3/
[gə∫ra] [gə∫ra] (bark)
[jsott] [jsott] (blow)
[na∫əf] [na∫əf] (dry)
[sma3] [sma3] (hear)
16 People who are not originally from Béchar mainly those who came from Bayedh and Ain Safra
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Some of the differences are:
/D1/ /D3/
[gəlta] [bħira] (lake)
[twəka] [tməd] (lie)
[g3od] [gləs] (sit)
[zrodia] [xizzu:] (carrot)
[zəri:3a] [bədra] (seed)
h) Dialect one and dialect four
The percentage of cognation in this comparison is 72% which is near the percentage
of cognition between D1 and D2 and it confirms that D2 and D4 are not very
different, examples of their similarities are: /D1/ /D4/
[3dam] [3ðam] (bone).
[∫rab] [∫rab] (drink).
[nar] [nar] (fire).
[hu:t] [hu:t] (fish).
[tqi:l] [tqi:l] (heavy).
These two dialects also differ from each other like in:
[raʒəl] [təra:s] (man).
[hməl] [twədər] (lost).
[ţri:g] [mənʒu:ra] (road).
[zəri:3a] is [bəðra] (seed).
i) Dialect One and Dialect Five
Dialect four is spoken by a minority, its group of speakers compared to the others is
the smallest, therefore it represents only 26% of correlation with dialect one.
Consequently dialect five has only few similarities but large differences not only
with dialect one but with all the analyzed dialects. Examples of similarities are:
/D1/ /D5/
[rmad] [rmad] (ashes).
[ţi:r] [ţi:r] (bird).
[3a∫] [3a∫] (live).
[γjam] [γjam] (cloud).
[jaħsəb] [jaħsəb] (he counts).
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The differences are numerous but we choose only some of them:
[raʒəl] [argaz] (man).
[mra] [tamettot] (women).
[nhar] [ass] (day).
[ħmar] [aγju:l] (donkey).
[∫wija] [afu:h] (few).
We explained previously that D2 and D4 form mainly the same dialect, the
difference is just in some words which are used by old persons, the similarity in
speech is justified by the long term contact between the two tribes. These two
dialects, however, are very different from D5 which has a very low percentage of
cognition with all the existing dialects in Béchar. The difference between D2 and D3
is a logical one since it concerns Rural and Urban dialects, the differences in the
way of life, the interests and the culture cause a difference in speech.
At last we can observe that dialect one is composed of different features from all the
dialects, except from D5 which is represented by a limited number of speakers (old
Shlouh).
The highest percentage of cognition is with D3, a dialect considered as urban and
used by a cultivated speech community, D2 and D4 are Bedouin dialects from which
typically Bedouin words and expressions were not adopted for an urban context
(Béchar as a city).
3.4. D1 as an elaborated code:
D1 or dialect of the majority is a model for an elaborated code, this dialect contains
many expressions and terms from all the existing dialects, from French and MSA,
the characteristics of this dialect were presented previously but to prove that it is
used by the majority of the new generation a questionnaire was needed.
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3.4.1. Questionnaire
This questionnaire is to prove that D1 or the elaborated code is used by most of the
new generation speakers in Béchar, which is a hypothesis we proposed as a native
speaker, and we formulated after analysing the speech of speakers. To get
naturalistic speech, we used one of the most obvious elicitation techniques:
recordings in unobserved settings, a small recorder being hidden. Many short-time
conversations have been recorded from random groups of people talking about
miscellaneous topics; the groups consist of two to five speakers.
The questionnaire contains four situations where the informant has to chose the
expression he uses, there are three expressions one from D2 and D3 and D1, if the
informant uses a not mentioned expression, he has to write it. The informants give
their age and gander, and it is just after answering that we asked informants about
the tribe they belong to, social class doesn’t present a problem in the selection of
informant because this factor has not really an effective rule in classifying people,
rich people have not a very different way of life than poor ones.
The informants are 100 persons, 50 women and 50 men, their ages vary between 17
and 40 years old, we selected 20 informants from each tribe: Ksouria, Doui Mni3,
Ouled Jrir, Shlouh, and Chraga.
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3.4.2. Results of the questionnaire
Just as it was expected –thanks to long term observation and our intuition as a native
of Béchar- D1 or the elaborated code is widely used by the majority of new
generation speakers, the terms proposed for D1 were chosen by more than 85
informants, some informants use none of the proposed terms, in situation (1) they
used some borrowed terms from French, or switched directly to French, like [fjansi]
or /fiancée/ these two terms were used by thirteen female informants, nine of them
are Chrega and four Ksouria.
In situation (2) the term [wə∫ta] was proposed by seven informants one male and six
females apart from these informants all the others used [wa∫].
Shelha was totally absent and not used, we didn’t suggest any term in Shelha, and
we didn’t expect any informant to answer with it, because it is nearly a “dead
language”.
In the situation (3): D2 was used by six Doui Mni3 informants who are more then 35
years old and D3 by nine Ksouria female informants, and the term [nari] was
proposed not more then four times by females also.
For situation (4): all the informants used the same term of D1 except two Ksouria
female informants who used [xarraq].
The terms used in the questionnaire are very old, because a typical term to
each tribe was needed, an important factor of identifying the speaker’s origin is the
accent, and to get a trusted results this factor was ignored, for situation (1), the term
[maxtu:ba] is a common one between all the Algerian dialects, because it is
originally from MSA, that is why new generation speakers prefer to use it than other
terms like [ma3tija] or [mzaγrta]. To code switch or at least borrow from French is a
normal behaviour, woman speech is said to be trivial and superficial, some female
informants (Chraga, and Ksouria) proposed “fiancé” or [fiansi], in fact the common
characteristics between these females is that they know us and their answer perhaps
comes from their impression that the questionnaire is about their educational level.
In situation (2), and for a better mutual intelligibility young speakers use [wa∫]
instead of [smu:] or [asmu:] which seems heavy to pronouns, [wa∫ta] was used by
Chraga and the answer of the seven informant is a result of the influence of their
original dialects, the three Doui Mni3 females shifted to Chraga’s speech as a first
step into their shift to D1.
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D1 and as an elaborated code contains abbreviations and simpler expressions and
terms than the original dialects [wili] is abbreviating both [will le3da] and
[wilmatək], some Doui Mni3 informants declared that they avoid [wilmatək]
because it is not polite they don’t mean really maledictions on the mother of the
addressee but on him, furthermore [wili] is used widely in all Moroccan regions,
from where many terms are borrowed and it is from where [nari] comes; [geţţa3] in
situation (4) comes from the Arabic verb [qaţţa3a] an easier and more
understandable term than [ʒoq] and [xarrak], the latter is used by some informants
who clarify that they use it for a particular context (when explaining that the person
was insulting or blaming like in [rah 3ad jxarrak fi fəmu:] or after all what he did,
he is still complaining).
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3.5. Conclusion:
What is mentioned above is a brief overview of the language repertoire of Béchar,
which is characterized by the existence of: MSA, dialectal Arabic, French, and
Berber varieties, of course we did not give a detailed explanation of the Standard
form of Arabic because it is the same one of all the Algerian speech community, nor
French was dealt with. Our concern is on the dialects spoken in Béchar, these two
factors are the only that carry some special characteristics of the speech patterns of
the area of Béchar, although this chapter does not present a detailed sociolinguistic
analysis on the speech of Béchar, but at least it provides us with a clear description
on the dialects which exist.
The words examined in the comparison show that similarities and
differences between the four dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are basically
lexical, phonological, and morphological. What is clear through that comparison is
that dialect two is the closest one to MSA as compared with the other dialects.
Moreover, in terms of dialectal variation we have discovered that dialects two and
three have the largest percentage of cognation for reasons explained before; without
any doubt dialect one, which is used by the majority, is the most famous among the
others and its speech characteristics are known among the non users of Bécharian
dialects. The only dialect which seems to have few relations with the rest is dialect
four for its unique origins and characteristics.
The results of the questionnaire in this chapter are very important; because they give
significance to the use of the expression “the dialect of the majority” it also clarifies
and facilitates the analysis of the actual sociolinguistic situation in Béchar.
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Chapter four:
Sociolinguistic Variation in
Bechar
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4.1 Introduction
We are interested in speech variation according to social factors: age, gender,
ethnicity, and social class. Variation in Béchar occurs between and within dialects;
in this chapter we will present variation between two existing dialects D2 and D3,
because D4 is similar to D2 and D5 is a Berber variety totally different from the
others. D1 is an elaborated code from D2 and D3, the difference of the nature of the
tribes (Ksouria and Doui Mni3) is also an interesting fact which promoted the
choice. The speech community of Béchar does not involve social class in variation.
In a town like Béchar social classes are difficult to distinguish; people, mainly, have
the same way of living. Variation, on the other hand, occurs at the levels of age,
gender, and especially ethnicity which is the main factor causing a clear speech
variation, though gender does not carry as much variation as the rest, because
whenever we say D2 we are talking about Doui Mni3, and D3 means the speech of
Ksouria. The origins of the tribe and the characteristics of each dialect were
presented with details in the third chapter, and the following phonological,
morphological and mainly lexical variables are studied at the level of ethnicity.
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4.2 Phonological variables
4.2.1 The diphthongization /aj/in D2 vs. /i: / in D3:
As we saw earlier one characteristic of Bedouin dialects and of D2, is the
diphthongization of long vowels. There is no rule for diphthongization in D2, it
occurs sometimes with verbs, with possessive pronouns and within nouns.
The long /i:/ which presents the past simple of the verbs with all the pronouns
except with “he” [hu:wa] and “she”[hija] and “they” [hu:ma] in D3 is replaced by
/ai/ in D2, in the examples below the verb “to go” is conjugated in the past simple
with “I, we and you”:
D2 D3
[ana m∫ajt] [ana m∫i:t] (I went)
[nta m∫ajt] [nta m∫i:t] (you went sg.m)
[nti: m∫ajti] [nti : m∫i :ti] (you went sg.f)
[ħna m∫ajna] [ħna m∫i:na] (we went)
[ntu:ma m∫ajtu:] [ntu:ma m∫i:tu:] (you went plr)
Diphthongization occurs also with nouns in diminutive form, while in D3 it is
formed by adding a long /i:/ to the word like in [kəlb] and [kli:b] (dog), D2 words
take /ai/ for diminutive form like in [klaib] here are some examples:
D2 D3
[wlajd] [wli:d] (little boy)
[msajki:n] [msiki:n] (poor man)
[mhajri:z] [mhiri:z] (a small pestle)
Surprisingly enough, diphthongization doesn’t characterize just old speakers from
Doui Mni3, but some pupils use words where long vowels are replaced by a
diphthong. At home and whenever we had a discussion about the Doui Mni3-a
seven years pupil in primary school- always commented “I know them they say
[xbajz] (a loaf of bread) instead of [xbi:z] which is common between young
speakers. We decided to check myself the use of diphthongization by pupils, and
from10 pupils of different ages between 6 and 10 years old, only one girl named a
part of bread: [xbaiz]; I expected that she was in a permanent contact with her
grandparents and that was the case.
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4.2.2 Variables /e:/ and /e/
D3 is characterized by a sound which is not found in any Algerian dialect except
the ones influenced by the Jewish community, and this was the case for the Ksouria
who were in a long term contact with some Jewish families living in Kenadsa until
1963. The two sounds /e/ and /e:/ are pronounced the same way like the French
vowel “e” exactly like the pronunciation of Jews speaking dialectal Arabic, /e/
replaces the /o/ and /e:/ is uttered /u:/ in D2 and D1, the long vowel /e:/ is no more
used by youngsters while the /e/ still exists in their speech here are examples of
some nouns :
D2 D3
[bhu:t] [bhe:t] (hypocrisy)
[3u:d] [3e:d] (stick)
[xobz] [xəbz] (bread)
[ku:rsi] [ke:rsi] (chair)
The plural of some nouns in D2, and in many Algerian dialects in formed by
inserting /u:/ to the singular, whereas in D3 we insert /e:/ like in :
D2 D3
[m∫u:∫] [m∫e:∫] (cats)
[hu:t] [he:t] ( fish )
[lə3ţu:r] [ləţ3e:r] (spices)
In some cases the variant /e/ replaces the phoneme /a/, it is easily noticed in the
Ksouria’s dialect. With some old speakers the /e/ is pronounced rapidly giving the
impression that /a/ was omitted, like in:
D2 D3
[qar3a] [qər3a] (bottle)
[ħaʒra] [ħəʒra] (stone)
[bagra] [bəgra] (cow)
[maγrəb] [məγrəb] (sunset)
One wonders if these few examples of a sound change are good enough to get a
general view of when and where exactly these phonological changes take place.
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4.2.3 Variable /ţ/:
D3 is also characterized by the pronunciation of the emphatic /ţ/ instead of the
plosive /t/ in some words. What is difficult to find is the setting of phonemes which
transforms /t/ to /ţ/, or when exactly this transformation takes place, here are some
examples:
D2 D3
[3ţitiha] [3ţiţiha] (you gave her)
[ħamaðtiha] [ħaməţiha] (you made it acidic)
[m∫aţeti] [m∫əţi] (you brush your hair)
[3θart] [3ţarţ] (you stumble)
One of the common characters between these examples is that variation occurs in
the /t/ used to conjugate verbs in the past simple with “you” in the feminine and the
masculine like in [kla] (to eat), [kliti] (you ate –S F) , [klit] (you ate- S M).
More then ten persons aged between 40 and 70 years old were asked about a
particular rule they trust to indicate where the plosive /t/ is replaced by /ţ/. No one
knows why or where exactly this change takes place, most of them told me that it
depends on the “rhythm”, and that “they learnt it this way”.
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4.3 Morphological variables
4.3.1 Variable {u:} vs. {ah}:
Among the morphological features characterizing D3, the suffix morpheme {u:}. It
has a very high functional weight, and it plays an important role, for it is used in the
third p. S. M; both as possessive adjective, as in [daru:] “his house”, and object
pronoun as in [bədlu:] “he changed it”, this is a common characteristic with all the
Urban dialects like in the illustrations the second chapter.
In reality, two distinct Cl. Ar morphemes have collapsed into one reduced form in
the low varieties: the first one, which we will name /u:/1 (poss. adj.) comes from the
possessive suffix {hu:} (“his” in contrast with {ha} “her”) in Cl. Ar, where it always
appears in pause form as {h} with the drop of the vowel, as in [daru:h] “his house”.
Like D3, many Arabic dialects go on to further reductions: phonologically speaking,
the final “weak” consonant {h} is lost to give [daru:], but in D2 and many Bedouin
dialects the preservation of final {h}is favoured to give the form [darah]; most
probably, a similar phenomenon happened with the object pronoun that we name
here /u/2 ,like in the Cl. Ar [baddalahu:] “he changed it” which becomes [baddalah]
in pause form, and is realised in D2 as [bədlah] like in most of Bedouin dialects,
here are some examples illustrating variation between D2 and D3 :
D2 D3
[ʒarah] [ʒaru:] (his neighbour)
[bəntah] [bəntu:] (his daughter)
[ʒablah] [ʒablu:] (hi brought to him)
[ba3lah] [ba3lu:] (hi sold to him)
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4.3.2 Variable {hu:} vs. {hu:m}
Another morphological feature of D3 is the suffix morpheme {hu:}, which functions
as a possession definer for the 3rd p. pl, like in [darhu:] “their house”, and as an
object pronoun as in [bədəlhu:] “they changed them”. This feature could be found in
many Urban dialects in Algeria, in this case there is a sort of reduction if we
compare it to the Cl. Ar morpheme {hum} as in [darohu:m] “their house”, but in D2
the final /m/ is reserved giving the form [darhu:m], the same fact occurred with the
object pronoun like in the Cl.Ar [baddalu:hu:m] “they changed them” which is
[bədlu:hu:] in D3, and [bədlu:hu:m] in D2, the following examples give a clear idea
of variation between D2 and D3 :
D2 D3
[ʒarhu:m] [ʒarhu:] (their neighbour)
[bənthu:m] [bənthu:] (their daughter)
[ʒabəlhu:m] [ʒabəlhu:] (he brought to
them)
[ba3əlhu:m] [ba3əlhu:] (he sold to them)
One important remark in this subtitle about morphological variations is that the
sound /u/ in D3 which is normally /e/ or /e: /, is here presented according to the way
the majority of speakers including young ones utter it, it means that /u/ in these
examples could be heard /e/ like explained above in phonological variations.
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4.4 Lexical variation
Variation in lexis in today’s speech community of Béchar is not at all less important
than phonological and morphological variation; there is a good number of lexical
synonymous pairs that almost each speaker learns from his or her elders, or mainly
the tribe he belongs to. The point in here is to show who uses what and when, in this
research and as we explained earlier, we are focusing on variations between D2 and
D3. As a result of the co-existence side by side of two main different varieties, the
speech community of today in Béchar appears to be characterized by an increasing
number of speakers who have acquired a high degree of bi-dialectal communicative
competence this fact facilitates the creation of the elaborated code or D1.
The data is obtained from recorded conversations involving different speakers in
age, gender, cultural status, and mainly different tribes; the context of the
conversations also differs, it is sometimes a chat in a shop, in the bath, at the
university, at the railway station, or even in a wedding, here is a list of synonymous
pairs:
D2 D3 gloss
[məftaħ] [saru:t] (key)
[ţobsi] [γtar] (slate)
[moγrof] [m3əlqa] (spoon)
[msalħa] [∫ətaba] (sweep)
[bidu:] [sţəl] (can)
[zrodia] [xizzu:] (carrot)
[molais] [mzæh] (medlar)
[səntu:r] [səmţa] (belt)
[xən∫a] [∫kara] (bag)
[sbi:b] [za3ka] (tail)
[ʒdila] [dfira] (braid)
[faðða] [naqra] (silver)
[gas3a] [qəsrija] (a big traditional dish)
[γorfija] [m∫i:rba] (bowl)
[ħwala] [mma3in] (clothes)
[lħaf] [mddarba] (linen)
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Apparently the most important factor of lexical variation in Béchar is ethnicity; in
fact in any interpretation of a variation we discover that it is a result of belonging to
different tribes. The examples above are nouns of objects used in daily life,
precisely in the kitchen, like the spoon, the slate and the can, and vegetable and
fruits, names of these objects are “familiar” to any Algerian speakers, but the names
in D3 seem “strange” and particular.
In D3 some verbs are lexical variables of other verbs in D2, but to a particular
extent, in a way that some verbs in D2 have different meaning according to the
context, the same verb in D3 has a particular term for each context, this illustration
may clarify the task:
[sələm] in D2 and like many Algerian dialects means “kiss” or “send regards” like
in [sələm 3lih] or [sələm3lihu:m] in D3 [sələm] is used just for sending regards but
for “kiss” Ksouria use [ħəbb] like in [ħəbbilha] (kiss her), [hda] in D2 means “keep
calm” or “stop” or mainly “stop moving”, in D3[hda] is used to mean “keep calm”
whereas for “stop” there is the word [rsa].
The difference in speech between the Doui Mni3 and the Ksouria is a result of the
different natures of the two tribe, one being typically Bedouin living with domestic
animals in farms and having less interest in culture (the Doui Mni3), and the
Ksouria who care a lot about it and live in an urban milieu. Proverbs could serve as
a simple illustration in this point, for example, in D2 if you want to insinuate with a
proverb that someone, after learning or studying a lot, is not working and doesn’t
help his family you may say [g3adlaina γa ki lbaw] or “he is like a small camel” in
fact this animal is always sitting with an opened mouth and moves rarely even if he
knows how to walk or eat independently from his mother. In D3 and for the same
situation the Ksouria say: [hasəlka ga3da hdə lkane:n], “here is the holy Koran
sitting next to the brazier”, it means that next to a brazier a man is always sitting
with no work even if he learnt by heart all the Surahs of the holy Koran or like it is
said in Béchar [xatəm əssəlka].
Because of ethnicity, which is the main cause of sociolinguistic variations in Béchar,
some words exist in one dialect but have no synonyms in the other dialects, because
the named objects or activities do not exist in the other tribe. While looking for
synonymous pairs between D2 and D3, this phenomenon was discovered, these
words have a relation with the places the Ksouria or the Doui Mni3 live in or wear
or even celebrate; [dərb], [du:kana], [zqaq] and [dwirija] are words designating
special lanes in the Ksar ;on the other hand, in D2 the word /3o∫a/ is a small tent
settled just for guests not very far than a bigger tent to live in.
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For the Doui Mni3 [∫nin] is a natural yoghurt melted with water, for the Ksouria this
word doesn’t exist and we were told that they never add water to yoghurt. The
Ksouria have [xəbz lfrina] which is a kind of bread cooked in [lfrina] a traditional
oozy cook, which the Doui Mni3 don’t know.
Lexical variation in Béchar goes beyond this comparison between D2 and D3, if we
take in consideration some new terms used by the youngsters, which may have
origins from one of the existing dialects but received some changes, by adopting
words from French or even from Shelha, here also the different origins of the
Ksouria and the Doui Mni3 are confirmed. What is astonishing in this research, is
the large number of words derived from Cl Ar in D3, while D2 was expected to
contain a larger number of these words, because of the purely Arabic origin of Doui
Mni3, this fact is the result of the strong interest of Ksouria and Moroccan
Mourabtin in religion, Islam and certainly Arabic.
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4.5 Age grading
The phenomenon of ‘age grading’ (Hockett, 1950) has often been taken into account
as an essential factor in sociolinguistic analysis, and many investigations have
shown that speakers of different ages tend to use different sorts of speech for
different conscious or unconscious reasons: e.g. approval of prestige standard
characteristics vs. devotion to peer-group linguistic characteristic. In a try at
indicating the age at which adult-type patterns of sociolinguistic variation become
recognized, Macauly and Trevelyan (1973) suggests in an investigation in Glasgow
that: “ the pattern is by no means clear at the age of ten, although fairly- well
established at fifteen ..” (1973:83)
This suggestion corresponds with the form proposed earlier by Labov (1964) who
says that for a child at the ‘third stage’: “the social significance of the dialect
characteristics of his friends becomes gradually apparent to him as he becomes
exposed to other speech forms, even while he himself is still confined to the single
style of his own vernacular” (Labov, 1964:91)
Labov states that the stage at which “the child begins to learn how to modify his
speech in the direction of the prestige standard in formal situations” (id. p. 91) is not
attained until early adolescence. On the other hand, the results of the investigation
undertaken by Reid (1976) with sixteen eleven-year-old boys in Edinburgh, suggest
that sociolinguistic progress of this kind may in fact take place at the pre adolescent
stage.
In the speech community of Béchar, and on the basis of the data collected from
different age-groups, it clearly appears that age grading is an important factor in
sociolinguistic variation.
a) Age group data
Again to get a natural speech and objective results, the data are based on recordings
or speech situations that involve different age groups. Speakers being recorded in
here are native speakers of Béchar but from all the existing tribes, and in different
speech situations: friends or acquaintances talking about different topics, students in
the university, a taxi driver with old women, in the bus. In a wedding, the style in
the conversations is regarded as informal, the variables investigated here are mainly
lexical ones.
b) Quantitative analysis of variables
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The variables are simply counted down from the recorded tapes of discussions in
which different age-groups took part, the scores and percentages are listed in tables,
what we can readily claim about the results is that the most salient thing about the
linguistic behaviour of young native males, is their tendency to shift to the
elaborated code with its simpler phonemes and expressions. Younger generations,
usually associate rural speech characteristics with toughness and masculinity, in fact
a number of adolescents avoid the pronunciation of /q/ or /e:/ because they consider
these sounds as features that characterize woman’s speech. Obviously the setting has
a lot to do with such linguistic attitudes, most of the boys who often use D1 when
interacting with street friends, may be observed to switch back to D2 or D3 when
talking to their family members.
In our research work concerning the speech community of Béchar, variation in
everyday speech has apparently nothing to do with the dichotomy standard/non
standard; it has relation with what may be called the street culture.
4.5.1 Phonological variable /e:/ in D3
Age 14 / 20 20/ 35 35/ 55 55/80
/e: / 10 15 25 40
/u: / 90 85 75 60
Table (4.1): Group scores of variable /e:/ in % - co-variation with age.
The scores in table1 reveal clearly the degree to which young Ksouria switch to D1
features: the weak long vowel /e: / which is typical to the Ksouria is replaced by /u:
/. Taking in consideration the fact that the subjects being recorded are all Ksouria,
one wonders about the obvious decrease of /e:/, especially among young speakers.
In the first group the only two speakers who use the /e:/ were from the Mrabtine or
the very conservative families whose children are educated by their grand-parents;
these two speakers make the exception since other young Mrabtine exhibit less use
of the /u:/ as they grow older; this shift is caused by particular attitudes towards D3
features which were explained previously.
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4.5.2 the morphological variable {u:}:
Age 14/20 20/35 35/55 55/80
/u:/ 10 15 35 70
/ah/ 90 85 65 30
Table (4.2): Group scores of variable /u:/ in % co-variation with age
The scores obtained for the variable /u:/, which is a feature of D3 and Urban dialects
generally (i.e, the 3rd p.m. sg. either the object pronoun suffix morpheme as in /3alu/
“he gave him”, or the possessive adjective suffix as in [taqtu] “his window”) as
opposed to the rural suffix morpheme /ah/, allow us to see that the rate of
occurrences of /u:/ is low with youngsters, then it starts increasing in accordance
with age-grading to reach an almost exclusive use of /u:/ with the oldest speakers.
Unlike the phonological variable /u:/, we can clearly observe that the morphological
variable {u:} is widely used by old people, and the 30% of old speakers are mostly
from the Doui Mni3 who don’t have this feature in their original speech. The
Youngster’s attitude towards /u:/ (Even if it represents an urban characteristic) is not
a satisfactory one they think it is an old rural way of speaking and for the boys it is a
feminine feature.
4.5.3 Lexical variables
Like the majority of the dialects in the world, the dialects of Béchar vary according
to age but not to the same degree, the difference is in the use, more than in lexis.
Teenagers and young people use some expressions and words which form a slang.
In all the dialects of Béchar, the old generation which is represented by people
between 60 and 80 years or more does not use the same words to refer to new
objects or activities as the ones used by the middle or new generations. Sometimes
they name them according to their shape or use, or they keep the same word with a
different pronunciation; examples:
In the dialects of Béchar except “Shelha” an old person never says “flexily” or “Dj”
or “climatiseur” but [3amarly] and [lγanaja] and [rrawaha], [lkazi] is said to refer to
“casier judiciaire” by middle or new generations, old people name it [kaγət ləwsax].
Speakers of D3 from old and middle generations often use words an expressions like
[wil lə3da] (malediction will be on the enemy) or [xra] for (another one) while
99
youngsters use [wili] and [waħdoxra], an old person also couldn’t say [kəlb] for
(dog) but [lqanə3].
” Shelha”, according to a study done by Mouili.(2010), is no more used by the new
generation, while old people are the only reference for research, middle age
members know some words or proverbs and use “Shelha” just when speaking to
older persons.
In D2 differences are not several, the youngsters use the same dialect of older
generations but they don’t often use some expressions like [ja wil mattək] (pay
attention), or [bəlħag] (really).
The new generation of the Doui Mni3 keeps its speech, but becomes more
intelligible for speakers of other dialects, for example an old speaker of this dialect
would say to complain that “the kid was sitting next to the door and was just eating
a sweet but you came and beat him! what do you have against him” [tfail ga3əd fi
3taibti jmasmas fi ħlaiwtu: maħadak manadak zaţ faţ 3ţaiţu: lnadru: a∫ binək wə
binu:], with the number of speakers who shifted to D1 from different tribes, it is
indispensable for the young DouiMni3 to converge to a simpler or a more
understood speech.
Generally speaking and like all speech communities youngsters and teenagers have
a slang which is common between all the speakers of the five dialects here are some
examples:
D1 Slang
[kirak ka∫ jdid] [lbaraka ka∫ ħaraka] (how are you? Are there any news?)
[kidaira lħala] [wa∫ lħala səbaţ wəlla n3ala] (how are things with you?)
[ru:h təm∫i] [xwi ţakss] (get away?)
100
4.6 Gender
Speech variation at the level of gender in Béchar is not well noticed as age, there is a
low percentage of variation between men and women. In D2 variation does not
occur because the DouiMni3 represent a typically Bedouin community where
women are not really superficial in their speech. Socially speaking, the first
impression a visitor has about women in Béchar what ever is their age, is that they
are not really feminine in their speech. Linguistically speaking they don’t care about
using a different speech from men, or some polite expressions, and a woman who
has a “better” way of speaking is from Ksouria, for the Doui Mni3 this behaviour is
expected, Bedouin women don’t have a very different way of speaking then men; in
fact for them speech has nothing to do with femininity.
Maledictions like [wil matək], [wilək] or [wilatək], are good illustrations in this
point, what is expected is that [wil matek] is not widely used by women, because it
is said to be somehow “vulgar”, here are results of a simple questionnaire where the
40 informants are DouiMnii and aged between 40 and 80 years old, 20 are men and
20 are women, this questionnaire took place in “Bouhlal” a very old poplar market:
Table (4.3): Group scores of lexical variable in % co-variation with sex in D2
As expected, women like men prefer to use [wil matək] more than any other
malediction used in Béchar, because the term is typical to (art.) Doui Mni3 who are
known with great solidarity. The Informants were asked first about the tribe they
belong to, and for them it is a pride to say that they are from the Doui Mni3, and so
they must say [wil matək] and nothing else. A conviction of the correctness of the
results comes from hearing women using [wil matək] in every context, and this was
the reason for our choice of the variables.
In D3 women use words for colors, rarely used by men, for example: a man would
describe something as being “red” with [ħmar], but a woman would precise with
[3akri] for “dark red” and [ward bən 3mam] for “light red” and [3alk ħmam]
instead of [zrag] for “dark blue”. Women in the Ksouria’s community are very
[wil matək] [wilək] [wilatək]
Women 80 15 05
Men 90 10 00
101
careful about their appearance they put on special jewelries and have names for each
one, like [zərru:f] and [ləxlal] .
Politeness could be studied as a relevant dimension of variation, but what is
remarkable in Béchar speech community is that polite expressions are more used by
women than men; this does not mean that men are not polite but they don’t express
it with special expressions. The difference is very significant in D3 for instance
when some one asks a man to send his regards to someone else he may answer:
[jəblaγ], or simply [saħa] “ok”; while a woman answers [mərħba bəslamək] or
[bəlfarħat wə sa3dat]. When a person asks for permission to enter someone else’s
house he says:[?a mali:n ddar] “oh owners of the house!”, women got the habit to
answer with [mu:laha llah wəntu:ma djafu:] (God is the owner and you are his
guests) whereas a man answers [wa∫ta](what), or [∫ku:n](who); from a man this is an
acceptable answer, but from a woman it is not.
Another malediction typical to Ksouria was used in a questionnaire, [wil lə3da]
(may malediction be on the enemies) is used just by Ksouria; it is supposed that
women use it more than men and here again we asked 20 men and 20 women in the
“Ksar” of Kenadsa; the place where Ksouria live and it is there where you can hear a
pure D3, the same instruction of the first questionnaire with D2 were used, and the
results are presented in the following table:
Table
(4.4): Group scores of lexical variable in % co-variation with sex in D3
Women, mainly old ones, prefer to use [wil lə3da] the answer of the question
“why?” was the same for all the 20 women, they said that: when you say [wili] or
[wilək] you pray for maledictions on someone or on you, and it is very bad
sometimes the prayer is rapidly accepted, so to avoid this you have to say [wil
lə3da] and this way you pray on the enemies”. Unexpectedly, [wil lə3da] is widely
used by men or exactly men aged between 40 and 80 years old, and the reason was
the same like for women, the small percentage of men who use [wilatək] said that
[wil lə3da] is more feminine then other maledictions.
[wil lə3da] [wilək] [wilatək]
Women 100 00 00
Men 70 00 30
102
Talking about D5, men seem to use “Shelha” more than women since the former are
able to gather with new people every day while women rarely do. Most of the
people living in the Southern Ksours are farmers, who are mostly males, women do
not use the same lexical items related to agriculture like man. On the other hand,
handicraft includes women more than men, so the latter do not use the lexical terms
related to this field as women, men especially young ones use deviant words, slang,
and taboo expressions which are not used by women.
103
4.7 Language shift
It is easy to observe that the majority of speakers in Béchar shifted to D1, the new
generation represents one speech community except the DouiMni3. Nowadays it is
hard to guess the speaker’s tribe from his way of speaking, which was something
easy to find few years ago.
D3 is hardly used by the new generations except in proverbs which they learned
from their grandparents; example :(he shouted on me) it is said in D1 [bahdalni] or
[γsəlni], while in D3 it is [xdit maxda tbəl nhar l3id] or [twadit fi kas]. The use of
proverbs in D3 is remarkably persisting, even with the clear shift to D1; middle aged
persons use D3 when speaking to the members of their speech community,
otherwise they shift to D1.
Old persons still maintain the dialect, for them it is a sign of civilization and good
education compared to other varieties. Middle aged and young people from Ouled
jrir also shift to D1, to not feel a certain inferiority compared to the DouiMni3,
words which differentiated D4 from D2, like: [zəgdu:] and [lgarg] are used just by
old persons who want to confirm their entity (being from the Ouled Jrir).
In spite of the high status that “Shelha” acquired in the community of Béchar, it is
facing a loss at least among two different groups; the first one is the new generation
that ignored its use in any type of circumstances, and the second group which is the
population that leaves southern Ksours and goes to live in the cities generally in
Béchar, and according to Mouili (2010) all these families have forgotten most of
their Berber speech. the new educational system and the contact with different
speech communities, became a handicap for “Shlouh” to communicate that is why
they shifted to D1,the only source of information about” Shelha” is the old
generation who is still using it and regretting that there is no written form for this
dialect to be preserved at least for research .
“Language death” was the end of a dialect which goes beyond this research; the
dialect disappeared with the death and departure of the speakers who were the Jews
of Béchar speech community. The Jewish language is not the one meant but it is a
dialect they created to communicate mostly with Ksouria, with whom they were in
contact. The dialect was a mixture of D3 and some southern dialects of Morocco
with some differences in pronunciation like the sound /s/ which was replaced by /∫/.
Example: [sidhu: i:sħak] (Sir Isak), is said [∫idhu: i:∫hak], collecting data about this
dialect was difficult, except some words and expressions used in folk songs.
104
4.8 Language maintenance
D2 is an example of language maintenance, it was preserved and few changes
occurred it, the new generation like the old one, uses this dialect in their every day
conversations and sometimes at work. Some previous studies said that D2 is not
widely used by the new generation, but in daily contacts you can easily observe that
the only persons whose origin is clear from their speech are the DouiMni3, this
means that young people still use D2.
People in Béchar, have a particular attitude toward the Doui Mni3, they are
considered to be rude and offensive, and these are Bedouin’s characteristics. This
attitude is the same toward the Doui Mni3 dialect, however, D2 was maintained and
the new generation uses it to express solidarity and ethnicity, belonging to the Doui
Mni3 who nowadays present a social and economical power in Béchar. Just two
generations before as an example, in the educational system they were not more then
six Doui Mni3 teachers at the primary schools, now they represent most of the
educational staff at the university.
Most of the rich families in Béchar are DouiMni3 but they preserve their Bedouin
manners and traditions and of course their dialect, solidarity between them may be
the main factor leading to their resistance to the effects of dialect contact and
language shift, to express solidarity, they use some expressions. For example: for
salutation they say [lə3moum] (uncles or cousins) and whenever they meet someone
from their tribe they directly ask [mnajnak men laxu:t] or (to which tribe do you
belong?), the term [wəld 3ami] is used to address any man from the Doui Mni3.
105
4.9 Diglossia in Béchar
As pointed previously, in Béchar Classical Arabic is in contact with Colloquial
varieties, which are presented in this work as the spoken dialects in the region, and
here we may speak about diglossia.
Each variety has a particular function, in diglossic situations according to Ferguson
(1959), the fundamental distinction between two languages or two varieties is in
what he calls “high” and “low” uses of language. As its name suggests the “high”
form is regarded as superior and having more prestige than the “low” form. MSA is
considered as the official language of Algeria, it is used in political speeches, in
religious activities and in the media; the low form on the other hand, is the mother
tongue of Algerians and is used constantly in all ordinary and daily conversations
and in Folk literature.
In Béchar religious speeches in mosques are said in MSA, to clarify things the Imam
switches to D1, in Kenadsa the Borda17 and many other religious writings are read
or sang in MSA. Béchar regional radio, also presents most of the programs in MSA
except those related to traditions and Folks, and for sympathy with auditors the radio
presenter switches sometimes to D1. In their daily conversations speakers of all the
varieties in Béchar use dialects, mostly D1 but they shift to MSA at work,
university, or primary, complementary and secondary schools.
17 A long praise on the prophet Muhammad
106
4.10 Conclusion
The diversity and complexity of the sociolinguistic situation in Béchar creates a
considerable number of variables at different levels. The choice was very difficult
since variation occurs within and between dialects. “Shelha” or D5 was excluded
from this analysis because of the lack of documentation and the deficiency of
informants rarely found in some regions. Variation is represented in a significant
way between D2 and D3 which are clearly different from each other. What is
confusing is that the two dialects are mutually intelligible, the Ksouria know a lot or
may be everything about D2, the Doui Mni3 also know how things and actions are
called by Ksouria, and in spite of a long term contact between the two tribes, results
of linguistic contact are not evident. In fact the Doui Mni3 keep on using their
dialects and Ksouria prefer to shift to D1 rather than D2, even if Doui Mni3
represent nowadays a social and economical power in Béchar. Variation occurs also
in Béchar at the levels of gender and age to a limited extent, this research comes at a
very important period of time in a way that it was not difficult to collect data and to
do questionnaires about D2 and D3 thanks to the existence of a large number of
speakers even if they are old. However one can not be sure that this data will be
available after twenty years, especially with the wide spread of D1, and in that case
to study variations in D2 and D3 will be with the same difficulties of studying D5
nowadays.
107
GENARAL CONCLUSION
In the present research work dealing with the speech community of Béchar, we have
seen that the speech community of Béchar like Arabic speaking communities uses
only the low variety in everyday conversation. An Algerian speaker does not
normally switch to the prestigious language which is MSA or Cl.Ar, as an English
speaker, for instance, does in certain formal situations. Socio-cultural constrains on
speech that make Western speakers vary their verbal behaviour according to the
addressee, the setting, the topic, the age and so on, are not similar to those involved
in the sociolinguistic variation in an Algerian speech community.18
Variation in the speech community of Béchar is not very related to socio-economic
status of the speaker; people speak more or less the same way, whatever is their
social status, in fact variation operates on other dimensions: ethnicity, age and
sometimes gender.
The data obtained in this research work allows as drawing a picture of the
sociolinguistic situation in Béchar:
An increasing number of young speakers shift to D1, the new elaborated code
which offers a better mutual intelligibility, whereas old people keep on using their
original dialects.
D1 is a collection of all the existing dialects features, and contains many
borrowed words from French and Berber, however D3 with its urban characteristics,
presents the highest percentage of the collection.
While age has proved to be a social variable that is tightly related to the
linguistic behaviour of the Ksouria, the Ouled Jrir and the Shlouh, the Doui Mni3
data show an almost exclusive use of the native dialect (D2) features whatever the
age may be.
At the level of gender, the investigations show that female speakers behave
linguistically like males, variations at this level can be observed in D3.
D5 like all the Berber varieties in Béchar, according to many studies, is used
just by old people.
Some of the several questions that remain to be answered, nevertheless, concern the
well established dichotomous verbal behaviour in the actual Béchar speech
community. Among all the existing dialects, D2 is the only one still used by young
speakers; will this dialect gradually impose itself, as it appears in many contexts? Or
18 Dendane.Z (1993)
108
will D1 overcome? Will Shelha disappear completely from the linguistic scene in
Béchar? Or will other facts lead to reuse of Berber varieties in the region?
Only a general review with extensive data and deeper insights in sociolinguistic
situation in Béchar, both in real and apparent time, can perhaps provide satisfactory
answers to these questions.
109
Appendix
English MSA D1 D2 D3 D4 D5
all
and
animal
ashes
at
back
bad
bark
beat
because
belly
berry
big,
great
bird
bite
black
blood
blow
bone
breath
burn
child
cloud
come
cold
cut
day
die
dig
dirty
dog
drink
ku:ll
wa
hajawan
ramad
3inda
ðahr
moðir
qi∫ra
daraba
liana
batn
tu:t
kabi:r
tair
ja3odd
aswad
dam
yahob
3aðm
yatanaffa
s
jaħtariq
tifl
γoju:m
ʒa?a
ba:rid
qata3a
jawm
jamu:t
ħafara
wasix
kalb
ja∫rob
ga3
u:
bhima
rmad
3and
dhar
∫i:n
gə∫ra
drab
laxatər
kər∫
tu:t
kbi:r
ti:r
j3add
kħal
ddəm
jsoţ
3dam
tnəffəs
təħrag
wəld
ləγjam
ʒa
barəd
gəţţa3
nhar
twəfa
ħfar
mwəsa
x
kəlb
jə∫rob
ku:ll
u:
zajla
rma:d
had
ðhar
jðor
ʒəlfa
zda
laxatər
kər∫
tu:t
kbi:r
tair
j3að
kħal
ddam
jhab
3ðam
tnaffas
taħrag
tfol
ləγjam
hdəf
barəd
gţa3
nhar
mat
ħfar
mwəsax
kalb
jəskaħ
jabes
kaməl
u:
dabba
rma:d
3and
dhar
jadi
gə∫ra
drab
laxatər
kər∫
te:t
kbi :r
ti :r
j3ad
kħəl
ddəm
jsoţ
3dam
tnəffəs
təħrəg
dərri
ləγjam
ʒa
barəd
qass
nhar
twəfa
ħfar
mwəsa
x
kəlb
jə∫rob
ga3
u:
zayla
rma:d
had
dhar
jðor
gə∫ra
drab
laxatər
kər∫
tu:t
kbi:r
tair
j3að
kħal
ddam
jhab
3ðam
tnaffas
taħrag
tfol
ləγjam
xlat
barəd
gəţţa3
nhar
mat
ħfar
mgar∫ə
l
kalb
jə∫rob
Qa3
end
zayla
rmad
ell
tadwat
halən∫
qe∫ret
iwaθ
axater
tadsi:t
itu:t
amoqran
ti:r
ntar
abərkan
idamən
itsatt
ighas
itnaffes
jehrqat
la3wert
ləγjam
ju:sset
jəssmed
nkad
ass
ymu:t
hfer
ma3fu:n
əjdi
isswu
jequr
110
dry
dust
ear
earth
eat
egg
eye
fall
far
fat, oil
father
fear
feather
few
fire
five
flower
fly
fog
foot
freeze
give
good
grass
green
hair
hand
he
head
hear
heart
heavy
here
catch
how
jabis
γoba:r
uðon
ard
?akala
baið
3ain
saqata
ba3i:d
zait
abi
xafa
ri:∫a
qalili
nar
xamsa
warda
ta:ra
ðobab
rijl
ʒamid
a3ta
ʒajid
ha∫i:∫
axdar
∫a3r
jad
huwa
ra?s
sami3a
qalb
θaqi:l
huna
?amsaka
kaifa
na∫əf
γabra
lwdən
lard
kla
lbaid
3i:n
ţah
b3i:d
zzi:t
ba
xaf
ri:∫a
∫wia
nnar
xamsa
warda
fərr
dəban
rjəl
ʒaməd
3ta
zi:n
h∫i:∫
xdar
∫3ar
li:d
hu:wa
ra:s
sma3
galb
tqil
hna
∫əd
kifa∫
γobra
lawðan
larð
kla
lbaið
3ain
təzdah
b3i:d
dhan
baji
xaf
rai∫a
∫wi
l3afja
xamsa
warda
ta:r
ðbab
kra:3
ʒaməd
mməd
zain
h∫i:∫
xðar
∫3ar
laid
hu:wa
ra:s
tsanat
gelb
θgi:l
hnahawai
n
gbað
ki:f
na∫əf
γbar
lowdan
lard
kla
lbi:d
3i:n
təslaţ
b3i:d
zzi:t
ba
xaf
ri:∫a
∫wi
l3afja
xəmsa
warda
ta:r
du:bab
rjəl
ʒaməd
3ta
zi:n
h∫i:∫
xdar
∫3ar
li:d
hu:wa
ra:s
smə3
qelb
tqi:l
hnaja
∫əd
ki:f
jabəs
γobra
lawðan
larð
kla
lbaið
3ain
tərdax
b3i:d
dhan
ba
xaf
rai∫a
∫wi
nar
xamsa
warda
fərr
ðbab
kra:3
ʒaməd
mməd
zain
h∫i:∫
xðar
∫3ar
laid
hu:wa
ra:s
sma3
gleb
θqi:l
hna
kə∫
ki:f
iγabret
tammzuγ:t
tamu:rt
it∫u:
tamalalt
tit
jawda
ib3ad
udi:
pa:
yeggud
ri∫t
afu:h
inemsi
xamsa
wardat
yu:fi
dbab
da:r
yequ:r
u: ∫
osbi:h
h∫i:∫
azizaw
ixef
fu:s
ntta
aqelqul
itssella
u:l
izay
da:
itaf
mə∫
sajjed
111
hunt
I
ice
if
in
kill
know
lake
laugh
leaf
left
leg
lie
live
man
many
meat
mother
mountai
n
mouse
mouth
name
narrow
near
neck
new
night
nose
old
one
push
red
right
river
sa:da
ana
θalʒ
iða
fi
qatala
3arafa
boħaira
daħika
waraqa
aljusra
sa:q
ittaka?a
3a∫
raʒol
kaθi:r
laħm
?omm
ʒabal
faar
fam
ism
ðajjiq
qari:b
raqaba
ʒadid
lail
?anf
qadi:m
wa:hid
dafa3a
aħmar
saħi:ħ
wa:d
mota3afi
sajəd
ana
təlʒ
ila
fi
ktəl
3raf
gəlta
dħak
warga
li:sra
sa:g
twakka
3a∫
raʒəl
bəzza:f
llħam
lomm
ʒbəl
fa:r
fu:m
ssmia
dijaq
gri:b
ragba
ʒdi:d
li:l
ni:f
qdi:m
wahəd
dfa3
ħmar
saħ
wa:d
xamər
sajəd
ana
θalʒ
ila
fi
ktal
3raf
gəlta
ðħak
warga
laisra
sa:g
twarak
3a∫
tərras
kθi:r
llħam
lomm
ʒbal
fa:r
fu:m
asəm
mðajəg
gri:b
ragba
ʒdi:d
lail
naif
gdi:m
wahəd
dfa3
ħmar
saħ
wa:d
xaməʒ
sajəd
ana
təlʒ
ila
fi
qtəl
3raf
bhira
dħak
wərqa
li:sra
sa:g
tməd
3a∫
raʒəl
jassər
llħəm
lomm
ʒbəl
fa:r
fem
ssmia
ma3sor
qri:b
rəgba
ʒdid
li:l
ni:f
qdi:m
wahəd
dfa3
ħmar
sħi:ħ
wa:d
xamər
sajəd
ana
θalʒ
ila
fi
ktəl
3raf
gəlta
ðħak
warga
laisra
sa:g
twarak
3a∫
tərras
kθi:r
llħam
lomm
ʒbal
fa:r
fu:m
asəm
mðajəg
gri:b
ragba
ʒdi:d
lail
naif
gdi:m
wahəd
dfa3
ħmar
sħi:ħ
wa:d
nte∫
talʒ
mta
i:
inghu:
isenn
gəltət
dəss
warqət
fu:sazəlma
d
da:r
tawrak
3a∫
argaz
xi:rlah
aisu:
jəmma
adrar
γaarda
imi:
smiyat
dyyeq
saddu:
manji
taʒdi:dt
keid
fonzer
aqdi:m
idʒen
dfa3
azzugaγ
ni∫an
wa:d
jəxmer
112
rotten
salt
say
sea
seed
short
sit
skin
smell
smoke
there
they
thick
three
wash
water
we
when
wife
wind
wing
with
women
worm
you
year
yellow
n
milħ
qa:la
baħr
baðra
qasi:r
jalasa
ʒild
ja∫u:m
doxa:n
huna:ka
hom
θaxi:n
θalaθa
γasala
ma?
naħnu:
mata
zawʒa
ri:ħ
ʒanaħ
ma3a
imra?a
du:da
antu:m
sana, 3am
asfar
məlħ
gal
bħar
zəri:3a
qsi:f
g3od
ʒəld
∫əmm
doxa:n
lhi:h
hu:ma
x∫i:n
tlata
γsəl
lma
ħna
winta
ləmra
ri:ħ
ʒnaħ
m3a
mra
du:da
ntu:ma
3a:m
Sfar
məlħ
gal
bħar
bəðra
gsi:r
ʒləs
ʒald
∫əmm
doxa:n
lhaih
hu:ma
θxi:n
θlata
γsal
lma
ħna
waiwak
lə3jal
raiħ
ʒnaħ
3ma
mra
du:da
ntu:ma
3a:m
Sfar
məlħ
gal
bħar
bədra
qsi:f
gləs
ʒəld
∫əmm
dəxa:n
lhi:h
hu:ma
x∫i:n
tlata
γsəl
lma
ħna
fiwək
hija
ri:ħ
ʒnaħ
m3a
mra
du:da
ntu:ma
3a:m
sfar
xaməʒ
məlħ
gal
bħar
bəðra
gsi:r
g3od
ʒald
∫əmm
doxa:n
lhaih
hu:ma
θxi:n
θlata
γsal
lma
ħna
winta
lə3jal
ri:ħ
ʒnaħ
m3a
mra
du:da
ntu:ma
3a:m
sfar
tisent
ini:
bhar
zeri:3et
uqsi:f
qjəm
ʒəld
∫əmm
doxa:n
di:n
itmi:n
azewar
tlata
issəri:d
ama:n
nə∫ni
melmi
ihani:n
3ʒaʒ
ʒnaħ
akəd
taməttot
tast∫a
∫ni:m
asokas
awraγ
113
QUESTIONNAIRES
Part One: this part of questionnaires is reserved to ask about the history of the tribes
and the origins of its inhabitants. It involves interviews rather than questionnaires;
and most of these interviews are done with old people and some experts, here are
some questions:
a) Questions for the Doui Mni3
1- what does the word Doui Mni3 mean?
2- from where did they come?
3-when did they come?
4- did the “ Khmous” come from the same place, or from different places?
5-when and how was the tribe founded?
6-why did the Doui Mni3 form an alliance with the Ouled Jrir?
7- how many years did it last?
8-where do the Doui Mni3 live now?
b) Questions to the Ksouria:
1-from where did Ksouria come?
2-when did they come?
3-when when and how was the tribe founded?
4-are the Ksouria of Béchar and the ones of Kenadsa the same?
c) Questions to the Ouled Jrir
1-who is “Jrir”
2-from where did they come?
3-when did they come?
4-why did the Ouled Jrir form an alliance with the Doui Mni3
5-how many years did it last?
6- where do Ouled Jrir live now?
Part Two: this part involves questions about the phonological and lexical
characteristics of each dialect. About D1, the questions are given to young people,
some are students at the university, others are day-labourers, and others met in the
town hall, or other public places whereas for D2, D3 and D4 questions were given to
old persons, the Doui Mni3 living in “Béchar El Jadid”; the Ksouria in Kenadsa’s
Ksar, and Ouled Jrir in “Gouray”. It seems that this part includes questions about
lexical features more than those of phonology. The phonological aspects which are
analyzed in this research work are all noticed and concluded from the spoken form.
114
a)questions to young speakers
1- years ago people could discover the tribe you belong to by the way you speak;
do you think it’s the same now?
2- why do we speak the same way in Béchar nowadays?
3- which dialect is the nearest one to the new dialect spoken in Béchar?
4- what is the difference between /nəktəb/ and /kanəktəb/?
5- what do you say for malediction?
b) questions to the Doui Mni3
1- do you think that your dialect is close to MSA?
2- what are the causes?
3- from where do these words originate [nahu:] [waiwak] [hnahawain] ?
4- can you site some proverbs ?
c) questions to Ksouria
1- do you think that your dialect is similar to Moroccan ones ?
2- what are the causes?
3- what is the prular of /mu:∫/ (cat)
4- do have synonyms for these words in Arabic (sonnette) (surveillance) (porte
monnaie) (la cantine) (mineur) ?
5- how do you say (j’ai donné) (I gave)?
d) questions to the Ouled Jrir
1- do you think that your dialect is similar the the Doui Mni3’s one?
2-if yes, what are the causes?
3- if not are there any differences?
Part three this part is reserved for questions about speech variations between D2
and D3, and variation at the levels of age, gender, and ethnicity. Questions are given
to different categories of people according to each factor such as: olds, youngsters,
boys, girls, the Ksouria and the Doui Mni3, the whites and the blacks. At the top of
these questionnaires, informants are asked to mention their age and gender and the
tribe they belong to.
a) questions to the Doui Mni3
1- can you cite some terms typical to your dialect?
2- how do you call a small chair?
3- do you use [wilak] for malediction?
4- do you use MSA in your daily life? when exactly?
b) questions to the Ksouria
115
1- can you cite some terms typical to your dialect?
2- how do you call a small chair?
3- do you use [wilak] for malediction?
4- what is the plural of [mu:∫](cat)?
5- when do you use /ţ/ instead of /t/ like in [3ţiţiha] (you gave her)?
6- what can you say instead of “his car” [loţo nta3tu:]?
7- do you use MSA in your daily life? when exactly?
Note: Shelha was beyond the questionnaires, data and characteristics about this
dialect where taken from a specialized study already done by a native speaker.
116
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Abstract
The present research work is an attempt at analysing linguistic variation inthe speech community of Béchar, a town where the sociolinguistic situationbecame interesting in the last few decades. Indeed, a significanthomogeneity can readily be observed in the speech community nowadays;the young speakers use a new elaborated code, on the other hand the oldergenerations use different dialects which vary according to ethnicity; Varietiesof this kind do not usually receive sufficient interest in the field ofinvestigation, though they carry many interesting linguistic phenomena.Before presenting the field of work, we will first introduce some importantlinguistic key concepts such as: language varieties and speech community,the second chapter draws a picture of the sociolinguistic situation in Béchar,and its linguistic repertoire, we refer to the linguistic phenomena which existincluding bilingualism, multilingualism, diglossia, and code switching, thischapter includes a categorization of the Algerian dialects as Rural or Urbanones. The third chapter is reserved for the description of the most salientcharacteristics of the existing dialects in Béchar; Chapter four introducesethnicity as the main factor that correlates with linguistic variation; somephonological morphological and lexical variables are presented, in thischapter, also, we introduce age and gender as linguistic variables, in D3there are linguistic features that appear specific to women’s speech, while inD2 the difference is not very apparent. We have found no evidence oflinguistic variation correlating with social stratification or style; to a certainextent, the sociolinguistic variation we have been able to examine is due,mainly, to ethnicity, or to age and gender, an important conclusion is that,because of the growing number of speakers who shift to D1 we may bewitnessing important linguistic changes in the speech community of Béchar.
Key Words:
Sociolinguistics; Algeria; Bechar; Variation; Dialect; SpeechCommunity; Linguistic Variables; Phonological Variables; LexicalVariables; Gender.